Comment by fifth

Comment by aspinn

Comment by Concsript

Just saw it, lol rolled a 72 lost to 98 >L< some one said it drops everytime in herioc truth in it ?

Comment by aspinn

mmm that would make it similar to the bronze drake drop ... so mabe... it would be nice for those who never get it but horrible for those who have already gotten it thinkin they got somthing of epicness

Comment by Foffen

got this beuty today on my hunter. Normal run.

realy nice mount!

Comment by Aazed

I got this little beauty tonight, on my first Vortex Pinnacle run.

Funnily, the healer of my group just mentioned that the boss dropped a nice mount on Heroic difficulty. And, boom!, it dropped on Normal difficulty :)

Comment by borsko

I also was one of the lucky few to get this mount! Looks very nice and this early into Cataclysm it is pretty rare to get it.

Even got a few compliments about it from a few guildies and random people I saw while questing.

Comment by Krotera

I didn't realize how rare this was when I got it, on my first VP run. O_____O

Comment by AvalonTlw

This dropped on 10/12/10 for me. I won with a roll of 77, i am so happy right now =)

Comment by ShadiX

As of today, i ran this instance for the very first time and this mount dropped in normal mode.

Won the roll with a 87 :)

Comment by rgmagic

does it always drop on heroic

Comment by Bawkxy

no it doesn't.According to popular belief, it has a drop rate of less than 1%. in both normal and Heroic modes

Comment by Stenen8788

The first Vortex Pinnacle I did the mount dropped, and I won

Comment by EonDrache

Yesterday while waiting for my Vortex Pinnacle queue to go through, I saw 4 of these in Orgrimmar. Asked all of them, 2 of them got it from Normal, 2 from heroic. Not a 100% chance on heroic. Ironically, all of them got it yesterday.

Comment by Seres

I have confirmed that this drake does not drop by killing Altairus in a certain amount of time. I thought it might be the case but I now have a record of killing Altairus in 45 seconds, and no drop.

I was thinking that maybe if everyone stood upwind of the drake as they're supposed to, that that may trigger the drop. I have seen this drop 3 times now and have run it about 40 times. I can't seem to tell if everyone has the good debuff or not though.

Will update again if people find this to be significant data.

Comment by Jaidi

I am beginning to wonder if this particular drake has a higher than 1% drop rate. So far I have seen it drop twice (both of heroic) and I've seen a multitude of players on my server with it aswell. Surely with such a low drop rate only a handful of players would have it.

Comment by Wolfchild

Well, since it also drops in Normal mode, and there's no limit to the number of times a day you can run a Normal instance, it's conceivable that there's a group of guildmates out there that are just running the instance over and over until the mount drops.

Comment by EonDrache

I'm trying to get my guild to run these with me, but 15 runs and they are already tired of it :(

Comment by jacon04

Damn i hate mounts like this, i like the look but not the way you obtain it. It requires no skill but just luck while it looks like it does require skill.

Comment by Tekunin

What mount has actually taken skill that questionable players haven't been able to buy their way to or didn't become farmable with age other than the Black Qiraji Battletank?

Comment by Amuletry

I don't think you understand the meaning of "ironic."

Comment by Flipppppyyy

Gladiator Mounts?

Comment by EonDrache

If you ask me, it should be run the dungeon this number of times and you can buy it or something.

Comment by DienekesThrall

Same here. First time tanking Vortex (n) it dropped and I won. It looks awesome! Up until this mount I didn't think anything could touch a Proto-Drake, but I'd take this hands down.

Comment by RoshiArgentDawn

Confirmed. Drops in Normal mode also. Just got mine today! Wuhuu is all i have to say! :-D

Cheers from a very happy mount collector!

Comment by Klocker

I usually am not very lucky when it comes to rolls, but after the 7th run on Normal mode (confirmed today) i actually won this mount!

So happy!

Comment by Protomen

So many downranked comments... so much useless information...

Comment by Tenjen

I like the drakes facial features. Broad noble jaw. A welcome change to the usual look without being as beast like the proto.

edit: i also find it a bit more "wholesome" bodied compared to the regular flights. less scrawny. Its entire design makes it my favourite drake.

Comment by eXX0n

Tanked the instance first time myself today, and it dropped. Didn't get i tho', a priest got it :(

Comment by bogdanepureanu

I can confirm 100% that it drops both on normal and heroic modes; I saw it dropping on both modes, but unfortunately for me didn't win neither of the two rolls. :(

Comment by Isakdokmo

Meh... With 50% of this wowhead page being "It dropped and i won it omgz im soooo hapy right nov!" Just STOP IT. We simply don't care.

With this mount being rare as heck, and the "twin" of the Vitreous Stone Drake (Reins of the Vitreous Stone Drake) from The Stonecore, this mount will be more like the Blue Proto drake in WotLK, but more commonly seen as it drops both in Heroic and Normal modes.

Comment by Iambeast

Got my Drake of Northwind on first run in The Vortex Pinnacle. I am a shadow priest. In Shadowform this mount is even better. The blue lightning on the mount seems to show while in shadow form, making you look electric. I'll submit screenshots soon.

Comment by Doomez

Not really much of an issue on drop chance, since it drops in normal, two patches from now you can just farm it yourself anyway.

Comment by Hijou

For some reason I can mount this while in water (ofc not under, but while you are at the surface). Don't know if all flying can (or if any are supposed to be able to do this) but at least couldn't mount my gryphon when I tried that one. Just me or...

Comment by hiteSPARKYZ

The only legit new mount in Cata - the others are just sad recolors of the normal drakes in Wrath and looks worse than them.

Comment by EonDrache

Totally uncool how Shadow Priests can turn this drake into the most badass thing in the game. Technically they can do it to any of the 4 Storm Drakes. Looks really cool shadow form like the one in the screenshot. Can't wait to see a shadowpriest flying around.

Also, 40 kills for me and no sighting of it yet for me. Going to keep farming, though.

Comment by Hadjin

I did normal mode stealth runs to get it with my rogue. Took along various druid healers. Rogue was geared ilvl346, druids ranged from 330-346 and all were fine. A very geared feral might as well be able to solo it.

It is only needed to kill the first boss and the dragon himself. First boss is a walk in the park (just stand in and go wild). The dragon himself hurts some so use your defensive cooldowns.

For comparison: DPS were 12k first boss, 20k on dragon. Healer had to sustain 3.5k and ~5k hps. The healers still had some mana at the end, so it should also work if you have a bit worse gear, but you shouldn't be far off these numbers.

Dropped on the 10th run already and I persuaded the druid with plenty golds to hand it to me.

Comment by Juyo

He looks like Godzilla from the Hollywood movie version.

Comment by vladoko

got it today , drops from Altarius in vortex pinnacle , when it dropped I was like "What"? , rolled 80 and won:))

Comment by Tantaloc

Just dropped for me and won the roll, it looks awsome.

Einsteinium, Quel'Thalas EU

Comment by Darmanisawesome

I got the realm first Drake of the North Wind on Eitrigg on 12/10/10 This is a very nice drake but i would rather have the stone drake from Slabhide personally. GL to everyone farming this i hope you all get it :) happy hunting and merry christmas

Comment by Deathfouton

This drake drops off the 2nd boss of The Vortex Pinnacle. It drops from regular and heroic, both have a 1% chance to have it drop.

Its been said that the fight is soloable by classes that can manage to tank and heal (Hunters, Warlocks and Death Knights from what I've heard. I assume paladins could have a chance on managing it if played right)

It has the same model as all "Of <direction> Wind" mounts, with different coloring. A very nice looking model.

Comment by PMikeC

Just saw it drop on a normal run.

Comment by Zenigwolf

Solo farming this as a hunter on regular mode. Hopefully it'll drop soon.

My current spec is MM with points in BM for spirit bond, and chimera shot for the self healing. Bandages are also important. I'm using a beetle pet for its 50% damage reduction, so a turtle or another pet also work.

The only danger besides aggro that you'll face is Chilling Breath being casted on you every once in awhile. And it hurts! What you have to do is rotate between Roar of Sacrifice from your pet and deterrence. RoS will reduce the damage you take from the breath, while deterrence completely deflects it. You'll have to eat a few breathes because of the long cooldown, but no big deal just bandage after a breath if you need to. Your pet will also need mend pet kept up.

If you run out of cooldowns while low health, and you have the recently bandaged debuff still... Throw out a fresh mend pet duration and then feign death until your debuff goes away or a cooldown pops up. Be sure to chain pet cooldowns, such as the 50% damage reduction skill, cower, and last stand. Altairus will use Chilling Breath right as you get up so be ready.

The rest of it is easy enough, dps him down and keep the upwind buff. Just be careful on threat because the upwind buff increases your damage a bit.

To get out quickly just jump off the ledge to get teleported back to the beginning of the instance.

You can camouflage through all of the trash, so no need to waste time there. I used the same spec for the first boss, but chimera shot was enough to keep me up through the lightning he does. It was just a tank and spank while dodging tornadoes.

Comment by charbswims

Just dropped in a 5 man random. Everyone needed and I did win. Pretty cool mount but the one from Stonecore is even cooler (Vitreous Stone Drake). Yes I won that one too no idea how or why but its pretty cool.

Comment by yellowmana

So many people got it on their first run. I got it on my first run too, with help of my brother. My bro won the roll, but he couldn't use it so he gave it to me. w00t i'm happy :)

Comment by rizzenkampf

Few runs ago, while running inst on my priest alt we were discussing the possibility of this drake to drop.I was surprised when it really did drop and ofc, i rolled the dice without any particular hope to win it - i'm usually extremely unlucky when rolling items.I won. With score of 100 :S :S :S Funny thing - my priest doesn't even have 280% flying skill! She never wins usual loot. But on her I've won all rare drop WOTLK drakes, this guy, Battered Hilt and 2-3 vanilla epics while leveling...Now it will join warm company of stuff lying in my bank :(

Comment by Viper23rd

I agree with Ryuuken, that's very selfish of you, considering other members in your party would've been very happy with the mount.

Comment by rizzenkampf

I'm a goblin shadow priest, I'm supposed to be selfish :3

Comment by thenuts

seen twice yesterday while leveling my alt 84... and won the second time... it was normal ofc

Comment by Sallara

Commenting and youNegative (-1)

Dropped in X kills – Telling users that you were lucky enough to get the crusader enchant in one drop is not considered useful information.

Comment by Khait

I was lucky enough to see this mount drop today on Arthas and was even luckier to have won the roll. :) I love it!

Comment by wingzero890

While I can see how this would work in principle I have not been able to get it to work for me yet (same ilevel as you same spec) The frost breath hits me way too hard (30k every breath)... any tips you two might have?

Comment by Faestira

Comment by thenuts

telling the world you'd like that mount so much, so you downrate people luckier than you is not something we care about.

Negative (-1) lol

Comment by Surray

Dropped today in a normal random run of Vortex Pinnacle. The group's DPS were quite high (over nine thousand for all dps) and we killed him in 43 seconds which is quite a lot faster than I ever killed him before.

Is the speed of the kill and the drop related maybe? Could be total coincidence, but perhaps it's worth considering.

Comment by Mlata

It dropped for me the first time, and i got it :)))

Comment by kalnak

Same for me and that's just after I got "Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace" and grp wanted to kick me becuase I won both :P

Comment by Apocalypstix

This just dropped out of... VP normal! ^_^ I didn't win... the tank did then he ninja pulled and left us :(

I posted this as most people have been told it was removed from the normal versions drop table >_> Shhh

Comment by Khauros

Solo farming this on normal as a ilvl 358 feral druid mostly in pvp gear.

Grand Vizier Ertan is the harder of the 2 bosses. You need to be specced for predatory strikes and nurturing instinct. Fight the boss in cat form. Each time you cast a finisher, heal with healing touch, rejuvenation and 1-3 stacks of lifebloom. Use cooldowns throughout the fight.

No special strategy required for Altairus. Fight him in bear form and stay upwind.

Comment by mimee21

All right I finally got this mount on regular - I didn't take note on how many kills but If you ask me they were around 40runs. It will get tough and you'll go crazy after a dozen runs ;p but dont worry it exists and It will drop.

Took me 9minutes flat from start to having Altarius dead. 1min to get to first boss with Camo.3.40secs to down first boss1min to get to Altairus with Camo3.20secs to down it.

Just like the hunters above mentioned - Camo thru all the trash - First boss is a joke just go MM/BM so Chimera heals you up and get a tanking pet *my fav of all is the Gorilla* and get all the glyphs of mending and obviously glyph of MD so you dont have to wait on CD. After first boss is down dismiss pet get thru trash with Camo again hit those orbs in the bridge once each and camo again.

Altairus is the challenge because its a lot of RNG. Mostly when you get too many Winds coming from behind him and with disengage on CD its just terrible. To avoid the 26k-32k Dmg he does every now and then Feign Death and Detterance back to back then use readiness and use them both again by the time you use those 4 Cds he'll be at around 60% if the wind was in your favor. When all CDs are down and the wind favors you burn Rapid Fire and nuke him. Since Chimera is healing you by the time your CDs are up you'll be at around 80% or even more.. So its easy just practice and you'll master it in no time.

Comment by scissors

drops from the south-est HC

Comment by Carmbas

Collect all four and the universe will collapse

Comment by Superduperjam

Killed this boss average 10 times each day for the last two weeks (must be +150 kills). No mount. Losing sanity and its not helping when guild says in gchat "lol dropped in random hc and i won it :DDDD". Why rng is so cruel? I should be grateful tho because hunters have it easier thanks to camo.

Edit: I'll tell my strat so I wont just cry about my luck: My pet tanks where the boss is and I myself go shooting in middle, why? Because then I can stand still 100% of fight because in the middle 3/4 wind directions gives me the buff. Only one wind gives me the debuff (one coming from boss spawn point) and I'll just eat it until the wind changes direction. This strat is easier because then I can focus on interrupting breaths and not constantly run for fair wind with the huge hit box.

2nd edit: 30 kills yesterday and 20 today = +200 kills and no mount. Can someone confirm a drop so I can get some hope?

Comment by Hadjin

Just tanking him where he is is in fact way less annoying, just did it like this for the first time and always had wind buff :)

Still no drop here also though, booooo!

Comment by Atanox

As of 4.0.6 the drake looks slightly more like how it was datamined from the beta. It now has stationary and constant sparks around its body/wings. Still unlike how it was originally shown in a mmo-champion video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVO5GZZ3348

Comment by danielmbl

Yes, it drops. Got mine yesterday!

Comment by Gelfling

Just got this the first time I ran the Heroic. I won this not knowing how rare it was. Good luck everyone!

Comment by poisetal

I'm definitely not farming it. Before you started farming, those 75 kills meant you could foresee a 45% chance of seeing it and a 11% chance of geting it if other people want it too... and the same aplyes for your next 75 kills.

Comment by Drainmor

I was really Really annoyned because this drake dropped when i was in dungeon and never won it then went into the dungeon over and over still never dropped

Comment by Hamoorabi

Just got mine a couple hours ago... Makes farming totally worth it just to fly around on this sweet mount.

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Comment by chickensrool

did a guild heroic run about 40 days after cataclysm hit.i had no clue there was a mount drop here, so you could imagine my face when i won the roll

Comment by mewmewface

drop on regular mode on a toon i barely use. anwyway someone offered 1k for it, buti think its too little. i think about 6 to 10k is good (i need tsunami card on my main)

i just like to say that i ran this place maybe about 200+ times accumulated on "all toons"mainlyhuman priestworgen hunterundead priesttroll shamanblood elf warlock

and i think about 3-4 times on the blood elf paladin i used that won it.

edit:since it was a lfd w/ pugs on another server, not so sure if gold can be traded

Comment by AWildmann

Is it possible for a warlock to solo it? Maybe as demo, using improved Health Funnel and stuff like that?

Comment by Ash99

Sigh...farming this on my hunter,on 40ish runs now,no luck with the drop as of yet

Now that i have some practice i do runs in about 8 minutes (eventually i get instance locked)

ilv351 in PvE gear running as MM with spirit bond

EDIT:Just dropped on 92nd run,i was already starting to think it won't ever drop and it finally did :Dnow im one happy hunter

good luck to any1 else trying to get it,hope it wont take u as many runs as it took me

Comment by tyke

I was 1st on my server to loot this. (Fenris) It was day 2 of the expansion, i was lvl 83 at the time. 1st time running the dungeon (normal mode) it dropped. Rolled a 92 to win the mount. Must of got 1000 whispers in Org when mounted him after that run. Good Times. :D

Comment by Rorcanna

Got this on normal mode solo, on the 110th run as a hunter. However I did it somewhat differently from others.

I place myself as far away as my range can go from Altarius, directly opposite him. I send in pet and start off with an aimed shot and make sure Altarius is tanked where he sits before pulled. This way I have the speed buff most of the time and I do not run around for one bit avoiding his breath.

MM spec = readiness. I use potion, bandage as well as the Draenei racial. Feign death and deterrence when up and in-between breaths, since I do no running or jumping, I can zerg him. Gear ilvl is 355 with talents put into spirit bond and extra health from the SV spec (121k health). On most fights using these tactics he doesn't get me below 50%. RNG however CAN be against you even though placed that far away but if that is the case, feign death and let him reset. My pet of choice is a turtle for the shield..and I don't like bugs...

I also got a lot of questions even after I got the drake wether or not it STILL drops on normal and yes..it does! I have had this confirmed with 4 different GMs, a friend that also got it last week and myself who got it 3 weeks ago. I have heard nothing about them changing this so for the time being, farm away!

Happy hunting!

Comment by Puntable

This baby dropped on my 84 holy paladin today in normal. Only done instances 80-85 and every.. time you choose random 83+ you get vp. Was my last run since I had like 96 % when I joined, three people shouted "Omfg" when it dropped, I only rolled 58 but looted it. Got one of each class 80-85 on my server and my paladin is the only char without epic flying, damn.. Sure is the more good looking one of the wind drakes in cataclysm.

Comment by Ullepulle

Got one today. This is one of the most beautiful mounts ingame.

Took me about 130 solo runs as a hunter. Normal mode.

So with 4.1 it drops in normal mode.

Good luck to everybody farming.

Comment by alkemist

I dropped this last night doing a random heroic, tied and won the roll. Considering I already have the Tol Barad version Reins of the Drake of the West Wind, I was mildly disappointed with the skin. I knew it was the exact same model but the bluish white isn't all there compared to some of the other more colored drakes. Although I can't really complain, I'm a mount collector and glad to have this one in the books.

Comment by harukalawl

Hey, guys!

So, I finally got this guy last night after several regular Vortex Pinnacle runs. I found that the first boss is soloable by a BM Hunter with a Shale Spider, but I haven't tried any other pets yet. I needed some friends for Altairus. :(

The first two bosses are definitely duoable by a BM Hunter and a Resto Shaman, and trioable by a Prot Pally, Resto Druid, and a BM Hunter, and two BM Hunters and a Resto Druid. (Trash included for the first two!)

It's a lot easier if you and/or a friend (or two) are able to sneak past all the mobs and go straight for the bosses. Altairus hits hard though, so unless you know what you're doing, you're better off with a healy friend. I didn't count how many runs it took, but in total, it was quite a few. XD

Good luck and happy hunting! <3

Comment by Faell

It is possible for Druids to do solo runs for this mount at level 85 on normal mode.

I could not do the first boss as Feral, but it is pretty easy as Resto. Then, the second boss can be done as Feral.

Comment by Sharpi3loko

If what you're asking is how this drops... the answer is simply be lucky. It doesn't have anything to do with how you kill Altarius nor how fast.

Comment by IdTheDemon

Tried doing the trash as a ivl 372 Warlock........... ugh.

I'm definitely waiting for the the next Tier content or so.

Comment by rhinoloupe

,

Comment by rhinoloupe

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Comment by s1rens

I'm kind of disappointed, how this drake looks like hundreds of TB drakes. Blizz should made its colour more unique, like blue proto-drake from Wrath.

Comment by Waldini

to confirm: this dropped on Normal VP for me today (scarycurls@azuremyst-eu).

Comment by Alfa

First time seeing this drop and I won it with a 98 today. :)

Thing is I was on my alt and my main is my mount collector, if you put in a ticket and have not learned it yet. Could/Do/Would they switch it over? :)

Comment by Drunak72

Hasn't dropped for me yet but I'm only 18 runs in. I got the Stonecore one after 12. I can easily solo this as a hunter. Keys to it...glyph into raptor strike. I run it as BM and have no issues. One thing that helps is to take raid consumables. Anything that gives resist. I even had the WoTLK Frost Resist set on me to help and it does. Reduces the damage by almost 70%. Hitting raptor strike just as he's casting his breath helps, popping Deterrence at the beginning of the fight gives you an option to hit it towards the end. Feign as he turns to you, and try your best to always stay upwind...means stand close to him.

Comment by SuperGogeta

Does it drop on the regular instance?

Comment by Wooster007

Saw it drop the other day on normal mode on my pally. Have never seen it on heroic.

Comment by healingenzo

Just won the roll on this. All I need now is artisan flying. LOL ! 356 Holydin - I don't do much questing. Bit of mining is all.

Comment by wowangmengsiang

This mount just dropped for me after farming it for 2 weeks. 5 runs per day and 100 runs during the weekends. I would say around 200+ runs for me so far. cant keep track since i didnt down the final boss.

Comment by ocping

Just got this on my 17th run... lucky.

Comment by revena

Mine dropped the first time I did that run, I had no clue how lucky I was until I checked out this site D:

Comment by Rysee

Dropped for me and my group today.. Random Heroic dungeon

Comment by Skornaq

Its all well and good coming on here and saying "Just dropped 4 me on random heroic :DDD" but that is slightly...Redundant. To have the little + hit, it needs to be insightful. And so my friends, I give you this insight!

So there I were, at 2:30 in the morning on the first of July. Twas' a stormy and rainy night (Actually it was quite warm, we have had lovely weather lately), and the sound of thunder clashed outside my room! (Lies, all I could hear was the occasional owl and some teenagers doing substances of questionable legality in the woods behind my house). I was sat discussing Roleplay ideas with my friend in Guild chat, when my random dungeon finally sprung up. The Vortex Pinnacle.

And so me and my intrepid fellow adventurers (who spoke no english) proceeded through the treacherously dangerous dungeon! Until we reached the dragon Altarius, who glanced at us, and spoke! "So, brave adventurers! You have come seeking the variety of mail, plate and leather armor I somehow conceal on my body! And perhaps you seek also, to claim the reins of a much smaller version of myself? I welcome your challenge!" (False, he stood there, shook his head like he had a migraine, and started swiping the tank as he ran in).

As the mighty beast fell after a gruelling fight (It was on normal mode, im level 84, overly easy fight), I saw something purple on my screen, with the icon of a dragon. Now, I dont know if you have ever had a moment where your expressions have gone from -_- to ^_- to O_o and then O_O but that is what occured. We all wished to ride this mighty beast, and so we all hit the need button! A pause, what was this? Only 4 of our 5 members had rolled! I figured that one member was performing some kind of occult ritual to bless his roll, fiends take him! So then he rolled a 6. And I rolled a 98. The drake, was mine! Hoorah! Then they kicked me from the group. But that was the tale, of how my Death Knight would come to ride this drake!

Hope you had a good read.

Comment by Blunttman

Finally saw this drop today!

First time seeing it drop on 5 85's and 3 83+'s lol.

I won the roll :D Love it!

Comment by Drunak72

254 solo runs into regular VP and it's now MINE. So YES IT DOES DROP IN NORMAL!

Comment by Knuzano

Just got this lovely drake on my Shaman today.

The tank of the random group offered me 100k if i would come to hes server, i would have said yes if i could get the gold as we where speaking, but to trust in him and give him the drake and then afterwards go to hes server and claim my money would be a 95% foolish suicide.

Anyways i just hope the drake will someday drop on my main instead of my alt. But feeling pretty lucky nontheless.

Comment by bluewyvern

Anyone else find the red tint this mount has in bright places spoils the colour?

Comment by faallen

i got this today was so bloody lucky!

Comment by Grosedy

This droped for me the sixth time I Sid this place. Unfourtunetly I did not win it

Comment by Peroxysm

Popped into a group directly before this boss, my first run through the dungeon, this bad boy dropped, and I got 'im. I'm never that lucky.

Comment by Hrenyo

just the screenshots of this mount shadowformed make me want to level my priest again...

Comment by forge013

just dropped for me today on regular mode and won it. Now if only i could get the stone drake.

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Comment by ssif12

The odds of getting this drake in a full group run is very low.

0,08*0,2 = 0,016

0,16% chance to get this on a run, you definitely have to be lucky.

Comment by vaderas

I've been working on this recently on my warlock, actually. I have ilvl 373 gear and a very standard demonology spec (no particular adjustments made from the normal raiding spec). It's a little on the unpredictable side in places, but this is soloable by a warlock with sufficient gear. Probably with more defensive play you could get away with lower gear than I've got, but the way I've done it I wouldn't want it to be much lower. Here's a quick summary of what I've found to help anyone else who's interested:

All this is done with Fel Armor up and the Felguard out unless otherwise mentioned. Bring a few Invisibility Potions for a few packs that aren't worth the trouble.

Grand Vizier Ertan's platform

The first trash pull, with 5 mobs, is quite hard. My method has generally been to banish one of the Wild Vortexes and then just do a full cooldown dump (including the Infernal) and Shadowflame/Hellfire on the other four mobs before they can kill me. With Metamorphosis's armor increase and Felstorm hopefully splitting the aggro, I have a fairly good success rate burning them down. Even if you don't quite manage it, you'll generally have killed a couple and made it a much easier pull on the next try.

The next pull is just two Armored Mistrals, and I've had no real trouble regardless of how I chose to handle them.

Down the spiral are 3 groups that are made up of four mobs, in some combination of Wild Vortex (caster) and Gust Soldier (melee). You can do similar AOE cooldown dumps to the first mob pull, but I've also found quite a lot of success just banishing one Wild Vortex, and grinding the other 3 down with Felguard AOE while spamming Health Funnel on him. Throw Shadowflames whenever you can, and it's a good way of grinding through these packs without wasting cooldowns.

At the bottom is a very annoying pack, made up of a Cloud Prince and two Wild Vortexes. Cloud Princes cannot be CCed, and summon a load of small adds. Banish a Wild Vortex, send pet in, and use Felstorm as soon as the Cloud Prince summons his small adds - at this point I generally do another Metamorphosis/Immo dump and try and burn the two mobs down, starting with the Wild Vortex - if it goes wrong, at least get one of them down before you wipe! This is the toughest pull in here, I find, but with practice I generally clear it first time. Make sure you stay facing the annoying lurking vortex mob so it doesn't start bolting you at a bad time.

The next pull is two Cloud Princes. I have not been able to reliably kill these - I've done it more than once, using all cooldowns including Doomguard, and quite a lot of luck - but it just isn't worth it. Just dismiss your pet, use an Invisibility Potion (Lesser Invisibility is enough) and run past them, saving yourself a lot of hassle.

Grand Vizier Ertan herself is not a huge problem. She doesn't really do any significant melee, generally just lightning bolting - so a tank pet is not necessary. I've generally used the Felhunter. I tend to blow all cooldowns at the start, including Doomguard, and burn her down as quickly as possible regardless of aggro. Use Soulshatter intelligently - once the damage on you becomes worrying, just hit it and she'll start bolting your pet instead for a while. Other than that, I've had no problems on this fight as long as you dodge the tornados. She doesn't disrupt you much, so she may well die inside a minute if you get it right.

Altairus's platform

The trash here is significantly easier. The first pull is four Turbulent Squalls - their main threatening attack is a ground-targeted Thunderstorm. Place your Demonic Teleport somewhere on the arrival platform. Pull them all with (yes, again) a Metamorphosis/Immo/Felstorm dump, and get them down as low as you can. If the damage from all the Thunderstorms they'll cast on you starts to mount up, teleport out of it and dot/kite them til dead.

The Storm Dragon on top of the platform hits very hard in melee - make sure you stand clear, as he cleaves. I've generally used a Voidwalker to tank him, and it's a lot easier. Keep him away from his healing well, and use Demon Soul: Voidwalker to keep him on the pet - it hurts if he starts hitting you.

Pass the Howling Gales in the usual way, keeping them in combat with Fel Flame, and run across.

There is a lot of trash on this next platform. The first 3-4 pulls are fine, but there's a six-mob pull of 4x Turbulent Squall and 2x Empyrean Assassin that is VERY dicey. At this point, your invisibility potion should be off cooldown, so personally I recommend skipping the entire room given that you're gonna use it anyway.

Altairus himself has quite significant damage output, but is not too bad. I recommend you use the Voidwalker to handle threat - you'll be taking quite a lot of damage anyway, as you're the only target for his Chilling Blast. By keeping his melee on the voidwalker and his Chilling Blasts on me, I found myself able to kill him, with cooldowns, quite comfortably before I ran out of health. Pet tank him roughly at his starting location, and place your portal off to one side so you can easily port out of the wind if it's in the wrong direction.

Hopefully my ramblings are helpful to someone! Best of luck.

Comment by blobbymac

97 runs and still no drop! Someone please assure me it is still dropping on normal!

Comment by Nordri

350 normal runs here, no mount :( I did get vitreous drake on normal in 144 when it looked like it's never gonna drop so I keep trying, probability is very low that it wouldn't have dropped for me after so many tries but it's by no means impossible

Edit: 4 runs later it dropped so yeah it still drops on normal.

Comment by Ninjy

I can assure you all it still drops and in normal. This week alone I have seen it drop 2 times. Lost both rolls to a non mount collecting healer. ><

Comment by OceanTwo

Must not...rate...up.........Damn.

Comment by wildemu

Trying to solo grand vizier as a 367 combat rogue, and it's damn near impossible because those lightning bolts just keep on coming no matter what you do. Any rogues more experienced care to share their strat with how to surpass this boss?

Comment by giando1983

It still drop on Normal?

Comment by pkotes1

? wtf learn how to write nobody knows wtf you just said

Comment by xBilly

Just had this drop two days in a row on heroic on Darkspear. Have the drop rates been altered?

Comment by IMissThottbot

I just ran this as a BM hunter with no special buffs, flasks, etc. I am in PvP gear (365-384) and spec, so basically the survival stamina talents, as well as good stam on the gear (base stats, not gems, obviously).

I used a Spirit Beast to tank it. Manually use cower on every cd, and keep your (GLYPHED) Mend Pet on the pet 100% of the time. Use the SB's heal on *yourself.* Make sure Mend and Cower are ready when you're going to feign a Chilling Breath. The main issue is balancing the damage that you take with the healing your pet needs. In any case, the Spirit Beast can survive it without issue, the fight goes far faster than with a tank pet, and you get the Spirit Beast's healing to boot!

I think that if you hit mend while you have the haste buff, your mend ticks are going through faster--I could be wrong, but my Spirit Beast had very few issues tanking this, and no aggro problems even with my haste buff + only one MD.

I died on the first attempt, due to not spending enough time on the ground; lesson is, don't feign with mend about to run out, or you'll have to pop up early to use it again. I also used my spirit beast on the first boss, same tactics (mend on pet, Spirit Mend on myself) and had no issues blowing it right up.

TL;DR: BM, spirit beast, no special buffs: doable, and fairly easy once you get the timing of cooldowns correct.

Comment by MastuuChief

i've been trying to get this mount on my hunter for a week now and haven't gotten it yet. then today when i decided to help my friend get a drake mount, i brought him to vortex pinnacle to go for it...first try it dropped. we both flipped out. i let him have it obviously. if u are a hunter, it is possible to do this with beast mastery spec. best of luck

Comment by borkjerfkin

1 run, 1 kill, 1 roll, 1 win

¯\_(ツ)_/¯﻿

Comment by Briasperia

I've only seen this drop once and I got it. On normal mode. On that toon's first group run ever through Vortex Pinnacle.

Comment by Athilar

Successfully solo farmed this as a blood dk. The dungeon is harder to do than Stonecore, which I have also solo farmed for the mount. The main problem with the trash is they do a lot of magic damage, so you need to make sure you're well equipped for that. The first boss does only magic damage, so you'll need to manage your defensive cooldowns accordingly throughout the fight. You can still hit him while the tornado shield is up, there's usually a small gap in it just large enough to continue hitting him, getting a few extra death strikes in. Altairus himself is by far the easiest thing in the entire dungeon, his breath doesn't even hurt that much and can be healed off with a death strike or two.

Comment by Renuts

Have any priests been able to solo Altairus?

I've been able to solo Slabhide but I would much prefer the mount this boss drops.

Edit: Why are people downrating this when its a completely on topic and unanswered question? Come on now.

Comment by JezzebelPop

I got this today on Heroic with a roll of 44. I felt a bit bad after my outburst of "F*CK YEAHS" and "omgs" as it was after I learned the spell that I noticed my roll matched a fellow guildie's. ARGH. I was very lucky, my first heroic in ages and it was a tied roll, first time I've seen the mount drop.

But I still feel guilty about it =/ Dunno why, RNG is rarely this kind to me. It's just it was a fellow guild member. If Slabhide drops his drake with the same guild member in my group I'll probably give them it if I win. It would be way too much guilt if I kept it.

Yes it drops on both Heroic and Normal, use the dungeon guide to see the loot table in game.

Comment by Ravij

How to: For Blood DK's.

I am currently an iLvl 379 Blood Death Knight and have solo'd this instance six times so far with no drop. But I will let you know how to solo it as a Death Knight.

As a Blood Death Knight in this instance you're key offensive abilities are:

The first trash pull will be your hardest. Run on the outside ring to the closest caster and pull it with Dark Command, then LoS the entire group around the corner. Try not to be near the ledge as you will get thrown off when you kill a Gust Soldier. Kill Wild Vortex's First. Start with Outbreak, spread your diseases with Pestilence, and then drop a Death and Decay. Throw up an Anti-Magic shield to mitigate magic damage. Basically just heart strike, death strike, and rune strike (when you have the runic power). Also be sure to refresh your outbreak on targets.Once the first pull is out of the way things will get easier till you hit the first boss.

Continue on to the ramp LoS pulls if you need to.Once you get to the first section of the bridge you will need to LoS the pull of three, Anti-Magic shield as soon as all the mobs get to you if the two mobs on the outside are Wild Vortex's. Again, Outbreak > Pestilence > Death and Decay to start with the offensive. Continue on after that trash is down, across the bridge. Here you'll face two Cloud Princes. Pick a Cloud Prince and aggro right in its face. You wont be able to LoS these so again. Outbreak > Pestilence > Death and Decay. Anti-Magic shield and recover health as needed with your healing abilities.

Grand Vizier Ertan is actually a lot harder than Altairus is and should be put on hold until you have all your abilities at your disposal. Start the fight by running up to her so when he/she aggro's you are inside her/his vortex. Outbreak then Death and Decay. Use your offensive abilities to widdle her/his HP down. Do not use Anti-Magic Shield until she pulls her/his vortex's in. The Vortex's will hurt a lot if you do not use Anti-Magic Shield when they are against her/him. Other than that this is a pretty straight forward fight.

Once Grand Vizier is down, use the whirlwind and jump to the next platform. The next pull you'll want to keep moving out of the thunderstorms without going up the ramp all the way as you do not want to aggro the Empyrean Assassins. Us Anti-Magic Shield as needed, though I technically wait till I have a whole swarm of Thunderstorms going off.Now you want to avoid the Empyrean Assassin’s by waiting till they’re at the top of the ramp before jumping onto the little ledge to the left (If you went up the right side of the ramp) or right (If you went up the left side of the ramp). Go around towards the dragon and kill it, then continue on straight ahead to the pathway with the two spinning orbs. One Icy Touch should be enough to allow you passage on each orb. For this next room you’ll want to do the same thing you did to avoid the Empyrean Assassin’s in the first room, though this time you’ll have to avoid two sets. Either go left or right when the Assassin’s are far away and run up the ledge to the ramps leading to Altairus. Note: The Assassin’s will not aggro you if you pass them by on the ledge.

Now comes the final trash pull. Run against the wall of the ramp to the first mob in the middle and agro the entire ramp. You’ll have more space to maneuver this trash group around going up and down the ramp to avoid thunderstorms. Kill the Empyrean Assassin’s first as they have a stacking debuff that reduces attack, casting, and movement speed and with two of them in the group they can apply that debuff on top of each other. Again use Anti-Magic Shield when needed.

Now onto the fight you’ve been waiting for: Altairus:

Altairus is a pretty straight forward and easy kill unlike his stone form cousin Slabhide. His only main attacks are melee attacks and Chilling Breath which you don’t even need any sort of magic resistance for as it’s easily healed through with death strike. Though if you do find yourself in a niche, use it. Another thing to note in this fights mechanics are the updrafts. You will always want to be in front of the updraft before it reaches Altairus to where you get the added bonus that makes this kill an even easier breeze.

All in all; aside from the trash pulls and the first boss, this is all easily solo’d by a lvl 85 Blood Death Knight with the proper gear. I would not recommend 359 ilvl Death Knights attempting this. At least a minimum of 370 ilvl would be recommended.

Have fun and Good Luck!

Comment by GrimAstorath117

A very nice mount, just got it on my third run, got a lucky roll of 99 and an awesome prezzy for christmas. :]

Comment by Chuby123

I have ran the vortex pinnacle 70+ times and it has only dropped twice. But guess what? I lost both rolls and I want to punch a small bunny in the face I am so annoyed ! Grrrrrr

Comment by Griefing

This mount confirmed drop in normal instance. I have been soloing the normal instance 5 times each day on my MM hunter with a turtle pet. Finally after 320 th runs , i got the mount today. Do not give up, luck will shine on you one day.

Comment by Oppelious

Confirmed just dropped 20 minutes ago on Trollbane for my 84 priest in normal mode. I WON

Comment by Survar

Anyone got any advice on soloing the first boss as an Arms or Protection Warrior? No matter what I try I can't survive long enough through all the nature damage to get her down. As Protection I'm not getting any rage, so no DPS going out on the boss. As Arms I'm just taking way too much damage. I've tried different trinkets, equipping a shield and using Shield Wall, Spell Reflection, Last Stand/Rallying Cry, Enraged Regen...everything I can think of. It's driving me crazy.

Comment by verduran

Just dropping by to confirm that it can be soloed by a 399 combat rogue. The fights are quite straight-forward, though the resistance you get from the drum and flask are quite crucial in ensuring a smooth run. Altairus's damage output is surprisingly high but fortunately the fight is very short, but swap in the evasion glyph if you want to be safe.

Comment by Gonee

Just got Mine aswell Soloing as Feral druid ( Bear form ) i had Problem with frist boss Only tell i find a way to solo him after 12 fail try after that i did 49 run and i got mine after 4 day's from stonecore mount solo aswell

( Gone - Kazzak EU )

i have screenshot but i cant link yet cuz iam newmm ill show it when i can GL for all dont say it wont drop keep trying and you will find it :D

Comment by Krutobrko

Comment by Rakblade

Resto Druids can solo farm for this mount on non-heroic mode as I did it on my first try today. You can stealth past all trash.

1st boss: keep up dots, wrath, and heal yourself (keep hots up, swiftmend when you need to). Took me 6 mins, only had to barkskin once.2nd boss: same as first boss, except using the wind to your advantage is a good idea, and thorns helps too. Took me 5 mins to down it.

Comment by domie1595

I know we are far into the expansion, but didnt think their was any decend guide for a Feral Druid to do this, so thought i would add one:

The mount drops on normal, so no need to go heroic.

You want to do this in full dps gear, since Grand Vizier Ertan cant be skipped, and all his damage comes from lightning bolts instead of melee, and we cant really mitigate that.

The 4 set pvp bonus (improved movement speed) works in here, so if you got that already, you can use it between the bosses, to get through a bit faster.

Recommented spec: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#0ZfbGfRkMzrfzMczIf you dont have 4x tier 13, you can skip feral charge completly, and go 3/3 in Perseverance (second row, resto) instead, for some extra survival. Also if you have any problems staying alive on Altairus (you shouldnt have), move 2 points from Feral Aggression to Thick Hide.

You want to use Glyph of Mangle in here instead of bloodletting. Since you cant shred any of the bosses, you will end up mangling like a madman, and mangle will be your biggest damage dealer.Glyph of ferocious Bite is also really good here (specialy since their is no other useful major glyphs), the extra healing will make the fight less stressful.

First boss, use Cat form: You simply have to stealth all the way too him, nothing on the way will catch you in stealth, unless you walk on top of them.When doing the boss, prehot yourself, i normal do Lifebloom > Lifebloom > Rejuvenation > Lifebloom and then pull the boss with a Fearie fire and Feral charge, if you dont have Feral charge, just Dash instead.

The boss is pretty simple but does a lot of damage, but at full 397 gear, you should be able to kill him without bothering with self healing. If you dont have that much gear, you should make sure to use every predatory strikes to cast healing touch on yourself, but make sure your not full or close to full on energy when you do so, since that will cost you potencial damage.

Doing the fight the boss only really does one thing besides casting lightning bolts, and that is pulling his tornados close to him. When he does that, you have to move at max melee range, you will be able to melee without getting the debuff from the tornadoes (slowed atk and movement speed), if you get the debuff, simply shape in and out of cat form quickly, and it will be removed.The tornados will do a lot of damage, so i normaly rotate my cooldowns around these, the first times i killed him he would die between the 3rd and 4th time he pulled them in. so i used Barkskin first time they came, Survival instinct second time, and then third time, Barkskin would be ready once again. If you get really low on health doing the fight, change into bear form and use frenzied regenration, but be sure its unglyphed. this should heal you for most of your health.

If you have problems downing him, Prismatic Elixir will help you out a bit, also, Mirror of Broken Images (from Tol Barad factions) sounds like a good help doing tornado "phase", tho i havnt tried this myself, so i dont know for sure

You wont need your Berserk on the next boss, so you should really use it here to get him down fast.

If you manage to do this, the worst part is over, and the second boss will be really easy:On second boss their really isnt much to do, you just go bear form and put out as much dmg as you can, if your not fully tank specced, he can take a bit of your HP away, but just rotating some cooldowns (Barkskin, Survial instinct and Frenzied regeneration) should be enough to keep you alive anyways. As i said above, if you have trouble staying alive, just spec 3/3 into Thick skin, and things should be alright.

When you got the boss down, just jump over the edge (after looting), and you will be teleported to the entrance.

I never write guides, so im sorry if it is a bit messy, but i hope you can use it anyways.

Feel free to ask questions.

I hope this will help a few people preventing a few deaths, happy hunting to everyone :)

Comment by lakonian

Easy to solo as a 386 ilv feral druid, takes me about 8mins per run and luckily im an enchanter to DE the blues because i'm up to 71 runs and no drop yet..

The Vitreous stone drake only took me 15 runs luckily but this guy doesn't want to drop yet.

Comment by johnnyrizzle

Can't see any soloing pointers for Mages, so I'm here to say that is easily doable. I'm doing this as Fire (4.3.3) with an equipped item level of 399, including Dragonwrath. Arcane will be a bit harder, but doable, although you do lack some of the survivability and movement. Frost would probably be a walk in the park, but I don't have a Frost spec to try with.

The trash is probably the hardest part of the run, with Altairus being the easiest part by far.

The general idea is to make as much use of Mirror Images as you can and then just nuke down everything in that 30 second window (or until they're dead). Ring of Frost is particularly handy in places as well. Any trash you have problems with - Invisibility.

For the trash leading up to Ertan, the Cloud Princes provide the biggest problem as they summon all the tiny elementals. This is probably easiest as Fire as a Flamestrike/Blast Wave/Dragon's Breath combo gets rid of most of them, but the Princes themselves do a lot of damage.

As for the Grand Vizier - Mage Armor can be handy, but it's not 100% needed. Pre-cast Mana Shield, open up with some pre-cast Pyroblasts, Blink into inside the Cyclones (if you stay outside you will take ridiculous damage) and then nuke. When the Cyclones retract, Ice Block and wait it out. When they open up again, break out, pop Time Warp, pop Mirrors and go all out. If all goes well she'll be dead before the next Cyclone phase. If not, you're gonna have problems.

For the trash leading up To Altairus, the only pack that should cause any problems is the final one before you reach him, with the 4 Turbulent Squalls and 2 Empyrean Assassins. Skip it if you want, but as Fire it's doable with a good helping of AOE, snares and kiting. Kill the Squalls first as they move quick.

Altairus - joke fight. Pre-cast some Pyros, run in, pop Time Warp, pop Mirrors, nuke. Because of the Haste buff, as Fire you just chain Pyros, which leads to a ridiculous Ignite and a ridicuous Combustion. You should only take one, maybe two of his breaths before he's dead. Your Mirrors will be up for their full duration.

Comment by gephyrophobia

After 107 solo runs in 72 hours as an enh shaman, I can finally sleep. You'll get it.. Eventually. That ^&*! is not easy to solo let alone that many times in a row. Good hunting.

Edit: The icon looks absolutely like Philosoraptor and it can't be unseen after I noticed.

Comment by Grifball123123

just healed Vortex Pinnacle normal for the first time today, it dropped, and i won the roll. It can drop on both Normal and HC.

Comment by norpoM

Comment by Reykhart

For those druids out there who want to solo this without using a healing spec on the first boss, it is very possible to do as a Moonkin. Considering how easy it is to drop Altarius in Feral, (Just stay ahead of the air current as much as possible and pop Frenzied Regeneration if need be.) I'll focus on killing the first boss. It's a good idea to dot the area around the boss with mushrooms before pulling. Also, it's very important to wait on this fight to have a full mana pool, because you're going to use it all. After having the mushrooms planted, pull the boss using your treants. Make sure they have Aggressive turned on as their stance. Once they pull the boss, pop Starfall, dot the boss with MF and IS, and then trigger the Mushrooms. At that point the boss should switch it's attention to you, and have a solid 100K health knocked out of it's 1.8mil pool.

Now is when the fight gets kind of tricky. The boss is constantly dealing pretty heavy damage. Be sure to save your Barkskin for when it retracts the tornados and starts to hurl the lightning bolts faster. Also be sure there is a fresh batch of dots on the boss before it does the tornado shield thingy. During this phase, pop out of boomkin form and heal yourself. You need to be pretty aggressive about healing. I recommend trying to only use Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, and Healing Touch. Regrowth takes a lot of mana, and unless it crits, doesn't heal you much. At around 60% mana, you're going to want to pop Innervate. Regular rotation for when the tornados zoom out. For me, this goes on 3 to 4 cycles before the boss dies. It's still pretty difficult doing it this way, and if you make a mistake, it can derail the whole encounter quickly, so be sure to give it a couple trial runs. The most important thing is making sure you have some back up mana. I recommend buying some Mana pots if you're having a difficult time with mana regen.

Hope this helps any struggling MS Boomkins out there. ^_^

Edit: Finally got this mount to drop last night after 103 kills. Just kept using the strategy I posted above and it became pretty routine. Just keep at it and before you know it you'll have yourself an epic looking wind drake. Love the Blue/grey colour scheme.

Comment by Frostian

I got this on my first run I'll post a picture when i get artisan :P

Comment by Ironbrew

My account was about to end, I had like 8 hours left. I didn't know what to do and was very bored. So I nonchalantly opened up the dungeon finder and saw that the healers were in demand, the one where they reward you with the Exotic Satchel. I didn't want to heal the Hour of Twilight heroics because I am so sick of that place and so I queued up for regular heroics and instantly the dungeon popped. It was the Vortex Pinnacle Heroic.

This is on my Shammy btw. I was the only one geared in there and everyone else was pulling below 10k dps, occasionally someone pulled above 10k. So as you can imagine, it was a looooong grind. I felt like leaving cause I didn't want to spend an hour in there. But I thought to myself, I don't wanna be that jerk that leaves the group because their DPS sucks so I stayed besides i got nothing else better to do. And so I keep on going. We get to the 2nd boss after what seemed like an eternity and they managed to kill him.

Altairus dropped two items. At first I thought to myself, hmm that's odd usually it's the final boss that drops more than one loot. Upon closer inspection I noticed one was blue and the other was purple. Boom I was wide awake, adrenaline shot through my body, Reins of the Drake of the North Wind had dropped =O. I clicked on Need just like everyone else. While i waited for everyone to Need I was thinking to myself, what are the odds that I'm actually gonna win this roll? I won with a roll of 93! I was so shocked and excited at the same time. The group was happy for me. I stayed with them and completed the dungeon. Only sad thing is, I got to fly around with it for a few hours.

I plan on playing Diablo 3 so that's why I let my WoW account expire. I'm gonna return when MoP launches. For now I can enjoy my mount vicariously as a wallpaper as I took some screenshots.

Comment by Angelusofnex

Day 6 of my hunt for this mount, at about 180 runs so far, i honestly stopped keeping track once i reached the 100 mark. Doing 30 runs plus a day, I hope it drops for me soon. The Stonecore mount only took me 44 runs so i guess i'm paying for the good RNG I had there. Doing this on my alt feral druid since mounts will be account wide in Pandaria \o/

Edit: 9 runs after this post i got it! Posting on wowhead was the key =P

Comment by alexz3

don't give up !

after 237 runs, it finally dropped !

just remember that it will eventually drop... someday...

Comment by amerskos

Oh wow, got this on my first normal VP run on my shaman. Has cool lightning details.

Comment by flabbergash

Okay so I know you guys won't believe me.

It's Sunday. I'm levelling my hunter that's on a different server to my main, that I don't really play. I go Stonecore in LFG, the mount drops. Weird, I think.

Then I go Vortex Pinnacle, and this mount drops =/

2 in the same day... I only won this one though!

Comment by Raevsusar

Have been farming this for a week, got it today after 83 tries.

Soloing it as feral DPS in normal mode. Were in catform 90% of the time.

Comment by TEMP002

Got this today in an lfg group on my alt. Wish it was on my main that at one point I was in there at least 15 times a day.(215 runs+ it does drop, rng is just painful).. Glad to have it though, because it is an awesome looking mount.

Comment by Rhaul

This gorgeous mount dropped for me the other day after around 40+ runs on normal mode. This is what i did, its a piece of cake with cata PvP/PvE gear ( ilv 386).

My spec was BM and the pet i used was Jadefang (any other shale spider will do) its buff it gives you helps reduce the damage you receive from Altarius's attacks. I used my pet to tank, casting misdirection first and then spamming mend pet every now and then, roughly when your pet gets to more than half heal him,also helps to use the health buff too.

Healing.

For my hunter in general, i used a tinker, Spinal healing injector, on my gloves from engineering,that enables you to heal for 30k+ without using your potions, you do need Mythical healing potions for it to work (1 will do! :P), i also used my bandages as backup whenever i needed it, but with the healing from the tinker,you wont really need them.

The fight.

Whenever Altarius aimed his chilling breath etc at me i Feigned death OR used deterrence, and always stayed with my back to the wind he summons, if ever you struggle to get into the right position use Disengage. Whenever i my back was facing the wind (giving you the haste buff), i used my rapid fire and beserking buffs,making my casts insta, so its best to not use your rapid fire until you are in position :)Roughly it took me 2 mins to kill him, and was an easy fight compared to a lot of other cata bosses. You just need to keep on your toes, watch his spells, and look out for your pets health mainly.

DBM is a handy addon to help you time your FD and Dit when he casts his spells at you.

Good luck and have fun! ^^

Comment by DELninjashifter

127 runs still no mount, soloing as a feral druid 395 ilevel, very easy with the OP health regen associated with being upwind.

Comment by Druish

Currently at 30+ runs so far running as a 389 blood DK in DPS gear, no sign of the mount dispite 100+ runs across all characters. At the beginning runs were taking me around 30 minutes with clearing all trash but now using my abilities properly it is taking me under 15 minutes per run being a night elf ;p

So for any other night elf death knights i thought i'd post some tips to get you started, there is probably a faster method but this works for me.

As i enter i run around the outside of the ring where the first pack is and cut in and run past them and shadowmeld just as I reach the top of the steps where the 2 patrol mobs are. Pull those 2 mobs and take care of those quickly, they do very little damage. After those I wait on the cool down for shadow meld (around 1 minute 15 seconds or so) and run down the ramp past the 3 packs with various casters and melee mobs chaining my cd's as i run down to prevent dying, when I am right at the bottom turn to face the vortex so it plays dead and shadowmeld again. The next 2 packs I take as normal as I have found difficulty in melding past those and you want the invisibility potion for later. Once you have cleared the second pack ( 2 cloud princes ) run to the top of the stairs so the vortex can't cast at you and regain health for the boss fight. As blood you should have no difficulty with the first boss, just use your cool downs where needed and use AMS or dark simulacrum on the vortex phases. Once you've killed this boss you will be able to pass to the next pack which has the pack which casts the storm clouds, run to just before the top of the ramp and use shadow meld again ( just before the point where the vapor assassins or whatever they're called patrol route ends, may take a try or two to find out where that is for you) exit shadowmeld as they gain a safe distance away from you and cut the corner to skip that patrol and take the drake as normal. Now you can just dot up the spheres as usual and cross. Next patrol is more of the assassins, and they always have a different sync to how they patrol so look closely, you can completely skip these also (one of the patrols cuts across the inside of the area so it is a tricky patrol sync you can just run around the outside of the ring on their side). It is important to stay close to the outside to make sure you don't aggro the drake in the middle, when i get to a pillar that's the time to use the invisibility potion as it allows you to completely skip the drake and the 6 mob pack altogether. Now you are at altairus :) ridiculously easy to solo as blood!

Happy farming and goodluck to others of you farming this mount it's a beauty! Also please comment if you have any other ways to make this run any faster!

Comment by Dondarion

72 runs as a BM hunter.... Posting here for luck!

EDIT: 149 runs and still no drop....

EDIT2: IT DROPPED AFTER 218 KILLS!

Comment by anodynex

ITT: A bunch of hunters who don't know pet intervene is the most broken ability right now

Comment by Vice92990

As of 4.3 this is still Soloable as a hunter. Im a BM hunter using Spirit Beast bear.

-Beast Mastery Solo Kill Strat- Normal ModeCamo past first few mobs to first boss.Send pet in with Mend pet kept up, stay between the tornado's and the boss this will allow you to take no damage. Once he starts to pull in his tornado's you can easy Spirit Mend yourself after the tornado's are done and moving out again. even without crit heal will keep you at full health. Rinse and repeat for an easy boss kill.

Once again Camo past all the mobs to Altarius.

The Altarius fight is fairly straight forward. Once again send pet in with Mend pet kept up. Stay in upwind to keep haste buff on. Deterrance the first Chilling breaths, and Feign death the following. Be sure to use Feign death on Cooldown when he casts Chilling Breahs to avoid alot of his damage. For the Chilling Breaths you can not avoid after your hit use your Spirit Mend ability to Heal yourself back up. Keep this up and you will have an easy Altarius kill and with any luck walk away with your Drake of the Northern Wind.

Helpful Macro's

Spirit Mend Macro-Macro that when pressed casts Spirit mend on self.If shift is held down Heals pet. If nothing is help and is targeting a friendly player will cast on Player#showtooltip spirit mend/cast Spirit Mend/cast spirit mend/cast spirit mend

Misdirect Macro-Macro will apply Misdirect to your current Friendly target. If shift is Held down will apply it to your Current summoned pet.#showtooltip Misdirection/cast Misdirection/cast Misdirection

A note about Misdirect macro you can switch the to lines to allow for simple click with no mod to cast on pet, and Holding shift to cast on your current friendly target.

Good luck and happy hunting!

Comment by Surrealbeast

This boss is amazingly easy to solo as a rogue with Souldrinker, if you are lucky enough to get one here is how I soloed the instance:I started out by skipping trash going up to the first boss open get recupe up as soon as possible preferably 3-5 point so it lasts a good amount of time. Pop Adrenaline rush and just zerg with Souldrinker on get slice and dice up now and begging using Feint on his Lightning Bolt attack. Try to Feint at the very end of the cast so it has its maximum uptime and can reduce multiple hits of the attack. From there when he does his first cyclone shield just move outside and don't touch and tornadoes while doing this. You then just quickly feint and dps from the outside don't get to close or a tornado may debuff you. Once they begin to move back out just run in and continue dpsing keeping your recupe snd and feinting the bolts. the second shield if he isn't almost dead you feint again, but if he is about to die or close to it just use cloak of shadows when they all get together. Easy fightAltarius is a lot easier in my opinion you pretty much have a heroism all the time in the fight. Just start off getting a 3-5 point recupe up and then saving adrenaline rush until he shifts the winds. Once he does you need to position yourself so that the wind HITS YOU BEFORE HIM. If you do this then you will gain the buff Upwind of altarius and will increase your attack casting and movement speed. This is where you pop you adrenaline rush potion if you want and just zerg. A bit after he does the wind shift eh will begin his Chilling breath casts you need to Feint these they do about 30k on me when I didn't so its very helpful to do that. If you can't make one just cloak if you need. Continue to re position yourself as he does his changes the way the wind comes in. From there it's pretty much a kill just jump off the edge and you will be brought to the entrance and leave reset get back in and farm more!

Another thing to know is that Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker IS helpful for bosses that their main damage output is their melee swings. The debuff slows their attack speed by 20% and will help out a lot in that sort of fight.

If you really need extra heals you should use flask of steelskin btw it will increase the healing done by your souldrinker and recuperate since your stamina is buffed. Also you can buy the inscription scroll for the stamina buff Runescroll of fortitude II.

Comment by Surrealbeast

Finally after 92 kills the mount did drop (heres a pic with proof and kills done) http:// imageshack. us /f/594/92 killsandmount.png/ (remove spacing)Also I have some tips(for rogues/ferals)!

First thing is(this might be a bit bad to do but eh). I qued with a friend and had him go tank spec. Since I am able to stealth to the boss and solo first and second the rest of group wasn't in range to receive loot so you wouldn't chance losing mount. What this did was allow me to do around 10 instances an hour by being able to no have the annoying 5instance limit since I was queing with a tank.(if a smart rogue/drudi follows use just tricks them let em die and then vanish)

Also bringing an enchanter and inv him to group just to sit in it can be worth it for the free small shards from being able to DE(he doesn't have to actually zone in)

Comment by regolen

Shadow Priest can farm it solo. Needs some pratice at the begin but I clear it in 30 mins for Altairus, without invisibility potions, nor elixirs. On packs of 3-4 mobs, DoT 1 mob per time and fear the others when they come close. If the mobs pack is too hard, kill only 1-2 mobs and jump down in the sky , you will be ported at the entrance (but there is a teleporting vortex after the first boss) and the pack will be easier the next time.On big mobs use shadowfiend and fade. Get glyphed dispersion.

Comment by ericnhw

got it after 2nd run in vortex pinnacle.. it is after less than 20 runs getting the mount from Stonecore. Vitreous Stone Drake... lucky day.. 2 mounts in one days.. no sweat! now back to TLPD aftrer 1 month , missed it twice, and no sightings after that...

Comment by lazindra

Today while dungeoning with my husband and a friend we were lucky to come across this mount and i won it. next dungeon came up and another rare drake dropped! my husband won that one. just had to share it :) was amazed that they both dropped where the odds are so low.

Comment by Keikaa

Just got this drake at about 106 runs. Most of them solo but I did count the times I got qued and did not see a drop. It really isn't too bad a solo, about 10 minutes a run and it was worth it for the mount. Not to mention all the gold you make. Keep trying my friends! It pays off!

Comment by hefron

I farm this mount for long time now on my warlock. In this patch I've found it really fast to reach Altarius. Very usefull things:

Charred Glyph and you can use portal to skip ALL PACKS. You of course have to kill first boss then Altarius but it is great improvement in farming speed. At last we are not behind druids and rogues who can easily stealth and skip everything.

Cataclysmic Gladiator's Felweave Handguards and Charred Glyph together make your portal cd shorter by 9 seconds so you can use Kilrogg very fast. Gloves and portal glyph made my runs below 7 minutes and now I'm stuck with "You have entered too many instances recently" after 5-6 runs

Happy farming. I'm at 100 kills and counting...

Comment by steady1

This instance is dead easy to solo as a boomkin in the current patch (5.0.x). All of the trash can be skipped via prowl with sprint and roar making it all the faster to breeze by (and if you are Ally worgan you have 3 stealthed sprints!).

Once to the boss simply blow your dps cds and nuke while keeping rejuv on yourself at all times with a wild growth/barkskin/"insert defensive cd here" where necessary. My gear is LFR DS with some 10 man DS gear sprinkled in and I have no troubles at all.

Things to remember: 5 runs an hour before lockout ( I can do all 5 in under 30 min)Don't run back after altruis simply jump off the side and get ported to the front of the the instanceThe knockback orbs after the first boss see stealth so make sure to tag them with a ranged skill (boomy dots work great)On altruis make darn sure to pay attention to the wind direction and keep the green buff rather than the red!

gl and cheers

Comment by Roguer13

Can someone pls confirm that this mount is dropping as of the 5.0 patch... Since patch day I have solo farmed this run well over 100 times, and before someone says anything I am aware it can easily take well into the deep 100's or even 200+ runs to drop... It will just be easier to keep plugging as long as I know that it's still dropping since the patch day

Comment by zknm7

With the advent of Patch 5.0.4, this fight, which was possible before as a blood dk, is now stupid easy. This is an extremely easy mount to farm now with a Death Knight. I run the instance in Blood spec with dps gear (398 ilvl), which includes a 403 Gurthalak. A Gurth of any stripe is an excellent thing to have, as getting multiple procs can make the bosses and trash go down much faster. The first boss, Ertan, goes down fairly rapidly, there is only one lightning phase when I run it, and I simply pop AMS, which is glyphed to absorb up to the maximum amount. I generally get Ertan down in 40-50 seconds, depending on whether or not Gurthalak procs. After this, I keep moving through the trash packs, however, when I get to the final trash platform before Altairus, I just run around the edges since you can avoid the four patrolling pats and the drake without pulling them, although you still must kill the trash on the ramp up to Altairus. The wind buff on Altairus is a wonderful thing, I've killed him as fast as 40 seconds, once again, with Gurthalak procs. My dk just shrugs off the breath he breathes, no need to even pop AMS, and I always end the fight with full health. Good luck with farming this mount!

Comment by gotstoomanytoons

In response to Roguer13, I got this mount today, September 10th, 2012. I wasn't even trying to farm it. Best of luck on your continued attempts.

Comment by Vanshir

I've done 47 runs now on my hunter and since the 5.0.4 patch, it became much easier for a BM hunter. I run into the "you've entered too many instances" thing quick now. I thought that I could log on my DK and run it once the hunter was locked out but nope, same message...

It took me 75 runs to get slabhide so I'll keep running it. Sooner or later it will happen :)

Comment by Siffe

Got this Sweet baby today after my 100 i think since my DMB lost the count at 65 thenever i kill a boss.Did this on my hunter SV :) i'm so happy with it. GL to all farmes out there ur will eventualy drop soon

Comment by Siffe

got this baby on my 100th run i think since my DBM didn't count my kills after the 65th.i'm so happy with this

and Good luck to all farmers out there. Never Give up Hope.

Comment by Kaldrez

It can be soloed as a balance druid at 5.0.5 just make sure you got the glyph of the Moonbeast so you can heal yourself in moonkin formand i am a CRAPPY geared balance druid got nearly full pvp Ruthless season 11 and got a 318 ilvl trinket aswell. The first boss is a pice of cake! rly easy to solo just heal yourself and burst him down and you can go cat form and use prowl and get pass every adds in the dung so you can do it rly quick but on Altarius make sure that you use your survivor cds like barskin when he does that you cast spell ALOT slower and just heal yourself trough that phase then just dps him and keep a look at your health at ALL time if you get below 50% hp its time to start heal yourself did my first run and no mount so far but i hope it will drop for me soon and i wish gl too every player that are trying to get this mount and gl all balance droods out there!Hope this will help you :=)

Comment by gurumed

i'm farming it with fury warrior.. really easy and fast.. its an easy Volatile Air farming place too :-)

hope to grab the mount asap!

Comment by xSpoz

As of patch 5.0, this has become very easy as a hunter. BM specifically, but I imagine all of the specs would work. I thought I'd take the time to share my strategy to try and help all the other hunters out there who want this beauty :)

For the first tier of talents, I use /crouching-tiger-hidden-chimera . This isn't wildly important but the reductions are good for avoiding Altairus' Chilling Breath (Deterrence), and being able to disengage more to face him with the direction of the wind for the haste buff.

The second tier is literally insignificant, don't even worry about it.

For the third tier, however, Exhilaration/exhilaration is mandatory. Not only can the 30% heal on you save you if you're taking too much damage, but it's basically a lay on hands for your pet on a 2 minute cooldown, and since your pet will be tanking this, it's by far the best possible choice. Spirit mend is a nice constant heal, but you/your pet aren't taking enough damage for this to really shine. I like this ability because if you ever forget to apply mend pet and you need to make a split second choice, this will always save you, where spirit mend is just a bit more reassurance.

The 4th tier is sort of preferential, but I recommend /thrill-of-the-hunt . All 3 of them are good, but with this you will be doing a LOT less casting, because honestly this is procced almost 100% of the time. The reason I chose this is because both bosses have casting speed debuffs, and you can literally sit back and use only 2 abilities for dps, (Not even having to cast) with this talent (Kill command whenever it's off cd, and free arcane shots for days while waiting for kill command). Although you can get a bit unlucky and have to cast a few cobra shots to regen focus if you aren't getting proccs, I noticed that I barely ever have to even worry about debuffs because I'm only casting for like 5% of my damaging abilities.

5th tier you're going to want to go with lynx rush, plainly because it's damage is unbelievable. When included in your "1 shot macro" which I'll go over in a bit, it can be devastating. Simply put, choose this talent.

For pets I'm using tenacity, but to be completely honest it isn't really a huge deal. I find I feel a bit more secure with it, as opposed to ferocity (which I was still successful with, just had a bit more tight situations). Choose what you will although tenacity is better, and has a talent that increases your mend pet even more!

The Strategy:

Camouflage though every mob. Yes, you can get by all of them. I've made a route where I can get to the first boss in one duration of camo, but if it's your first time I recommend being a bit more careful and making your own route.

For the first boss, misdirect onto your pet, send him in, and throw a mend pet up on him. 6 (I believe) tornadoes will spawn around the platform and rotate around the boss. They will form a circle, and you must stay inside the circle, or you will take a lot of damage and probably die. Pop your damage macro; damage trinket (if you have one), rapid fire, bestial wrath, lynx rush.Spam kill command/arcane shot and keep mend pet up. Make sure to not touch any of the tornadoes as you will get a debuff that reduces casting speed by quite a bit. When he retracts the tornadoes, you can use deterrence to avoid taking a few little hits but it's not necessary. If you/your pet get low just use exhilaration. Very easy fight, just don't touch the tornadoes and stay inside the circle of said tornadoes. Also, side note, don't use readiness this fight, it will be more useful later.

You will come up to a little bridge with 2 swirly balls. There should be about 10-30 seconds left on your camo cooldown. Wait untill your camo is off cd, and then fire a shot at the ball. This will negate it's damage/knockback effect for a few seconds allowing you to run by. Do the same to the second ball and proceed across the bridge. Stand on the other side and wait until you're out of combat, then reapply camouflage. Run to Altairus.

For this boss you need to be a bit more careful, but it's still a walk in the park. Again, send your pet in with misdirect and mend put up, pop all damage cooldowns. Occasionally, he will untarget your pet, target you, and begin to cast an attack called chilling breath. It hits for around 30k, and depending on your gear if you don't avoid a few of these, it might kill you. There's 2 ways to avoid this. 1, feign death as soon as he targets you. If done quick enough, it will cause the attack to fail. 2, Deterrence. Either one works perfectly fine although deterrence is a bit more reliable. The next thing to worry about is the direction the wind is going. It will face either north, east, south or west. If it is blowing in the direction you are facing, and pointing at him, it will greatly increase haste. If it's against you, it will decrease haste. With thrill of the hunt, you won't really be casting so you barely have to worry, as the direction of wind changes quite often, but if it's slowing you down by a lot, just disengage to a place where you're facing the boss along with the wind. The reason I recommended saving readiness for this fight is because you can avoid a lot more damage. Pop all damage cds, feign the first chilling breath, deterrence the second. Use readiness, pop all damage cooldowns again, and you can now avoid 2 more chilling breaths easily using fd/deterrence again. If you're a dumbass and get hit by too many of these, just use exhilaration and you should be fine. I'm pretty sure my worst ever attempt the closest I came to dying was like 40k health after exhil.

I hope this guide was helpful to anyone who read it, even if you aren't a hunter :) Good luck, and happy farming :)

Comment by Paulosio

I just got this on my 240th run since patch 5.04 just 20 hours before mists of Pandaria comes out.... I was desperate to have it crossed off my list before that.

I farmed the mount as a BM hunter with a spirit beast pet. Camoflage past all the trash. Nuke the 1st boss (dies in around 25-30 seconds), skip next trash with camoflage. Nuke Altairus down. Each run normally takes around 5 mins but after 240 runs even 5 minutes starts feeling like a long time.

Annoyingly I saw this mount drop in only my 2nd ever Vortex pinnacle run right at the beginning of Cataclysm, but due to some unidentified bug I didn't even get the option to roll on it.

Comment by Photonz

I can confirm this mount is available on the Black Market Auction House.

Sold for about 65k on my server (very high pop) yesterday. So, if you have a decent supply of gold and not as much time to farm you might want to be on the look out.

Comment by tubstermania

Easy solo as 90 Blood DK, or really an N-Elf tanking class:

1) Run into instance2) Make sure you have full health3) Run through all mobs up to first boss, Bubble/shield/pop defensive CD when running through the dudes that stun you4) Shadowmeld right before first boss, let all adds run away before you move out of meld, to be safe5) Kill first boss6) Run through all adds to second boss, try not to pull the Storm Drake that is on its own platform, it will be annoying when you try to shadowmeld.7) Shadowmeld at stairs next to second boss. If adds don't run, kill them (duh)8) Kill boss, loot.9) Jump off side (close to stiars), it will tele you to the entrance, run out, reset instances, repeat for farm :)

Comment by nasapunk88

Can be bought from the Black Auction House (random chance) starting at 20k gold bid.Currently it is on Shadowsong-US for 105k.

Comment by Aracela

I'm starting to lose hope that this is actually still in game post Cata. 215 runs since 5.0.4 and I still haven't seen it. =/ (normal mode of course)

Comment by Roserud

After 150+ runs and still no mount, I only had one choise left, I went to the black market auction house!

Comment by Legalt

Server - Garithos (A)

Character - Silvérs (alt-233) - 90 NE Hunter

After days of farming for this AMAZING mount, I woke up this morning saying "Time to grind again <.<". I'm at 106 kills when I log on. Spend the next 15-20 min killing the boss 5 more times... no luck. Hearth to the Shrine, go to SW to enchant my heirloom cloak with stealth, do a BG... leave the BG, %^&* around, then was on my way to VP again.

I'm on my next 5 kills now. Killed him 4 times with no luck... Last run of the hour, did my usual thing: Camo past the the first mob, run along the left side past those storm guys, aggro the guys that charge, pop deterrence on the last mob before I get charged to stop some damage, then I use Disengage with post haste to run past the first mob on that bridge, then FD and camo again past the mobs to the first boss (All in a minute if you're curious). Also takes about a minute 10 seconds if you camo the whole way right before the first pack when you enter VP. Killed the Vizier, dismiss pet, got to the other side, then ran along the right edge past those blue elementals (usually don't aggro). Ran past the dragon, past the gales, then along the left edge all the way up to Altairus. Kill him in about 20 seconds, but I don't loot right away.

116th kill, I say to myself out loud "Moment of truth" for no apparent reason... I loot him thinking just the usual gold and blue will be there... man, was I wrong. The second I saw those Reigns, a huge smile just came, put both my arms in the air like Hiro from Heroes, and just said WOOOO out loud.

The grind was long... not as much as most, but I can tell you now.... DEFINITELY worth it.

To all who're losing the strength to keep going... JUST DO IT! It'll happen eventually. Thanks for reading my experience, and if you're also a hunter, I might have given you some tips to getting past everything pretty easily. I also was using Gondria as my pet if you were curious.

Comment by biggreenweenie

After a one year break from WoW, my hubby and I returned yesterday. A big draw to come back to the game was all of the new mounts and pets. I'm a collector with 151 pets and 136 mounts. I've spent hours, days, weeks farming anything and everything that you possibly can.

I decided to help my hubby level by running him through some early cata dungeons. This mount dropped on our second run through Vortex Pinnacle. Just before, we saw the Vitreous Stone Drake drop in Stonecore on our fourth run. Each time, the dungeon was on regular. Don't give up! Things have a funny way of working out.

Comment by Miryc

After a long fought battle of 18 runs. I finally got my drake.

I was running on a hunter with quest greens and camoing through the whole thing. 1 run took me ~4 mins to complete. The most annoying part about obtaining this mount was the lockout after 5 instance runs.

Some people are just more lucky than others. I am usually the unlucky one :)

Comment by Xinzo

mages can use invis right before boss to drop agro, this way they can clear the dungeon under 5mins

Comment by DELVelanas

I know many of you find it easy to get frustrated farming for this mount (myself included) so I've put together some advice of a good way to approach this. I have a few tips as well as some information about cumulative probability which will make the grind much more bearable. My motto is patience + hard work = success. The process of getting this mount is not hard, but you may run into some serious mental road blocks if you don't go into it with the proper mindset. Here are some suggestions I hope you find useful and perhaps encouraging.

1. Do not ever expect the mount to drop. You go in with high expectations and you will be crushed after running this over a hundred times and not seeing it drop. Keep faith that it will eventually drop.

2. Don't put farming the mount as a primary focus. Since Blizzard was so kind to make this drop on normal mode you may be tempted to grind through it and spend every single hourly reset in the Vortex Pinnacle until you get it. If you insist on doing it this way you will eventually lose hope of seeing it drop and may just put it off; and then you will never be the proud owner of one of the most beautiful drake mounts in the game.

3. If you have a leveled hunter, rogue, or feral druid, please choose to do the grind with them as it will drastically reduce the amount of time you spend in the instance (since you can stealth past all the mobs). I tried with my DK, but killing every pack of mobs along the way took me around 15-20 minutes for a complete run and my health bar was barely moving. I did this on my hunter in less than 5 minutes by camouflaging past everything. If you do not have one of these classes leveled to 90 it will take you an insane amount of time (we're talking hours each day) unless you pull a few tricks which I mention*.

4. Don't do this on your main if it is one of the mentioned classes. If your constantly logging into them, you will always find something else you need to do and this will throw a wrench into your well oiled farming machine due to travel time. Instead, make your alt your main until you've gotten this mount. Keep your designated mount farmer perched in front of the instance entrance and devote them to this task until it is finished. If you have to fly to the entrance multiple times each day I guarantee you will get discouraged.

5. Limit yourself to three hourly sets each day and space them out over several hours. I like to do other things on the game for a little while and then before I get off I spend another 30 or so minutes running the instance. That way it becomes a routine instead of a chore. Then I go out and do something enjoyable in real life so that the next time I log in I'm a) refreshed and not sick of the game and b) I'm not just logging in to perform a chore, but to have fun and then mindlessly complete another routine. Taking breaks from the game is crucial or you will slowly degenerate into complete and utter madness. Yogg-Saron will be your daddy and Altairus will be the puzzle-box he gives you for Christmas.

6. Put on your favorite music and try and forget what your doing. After doing something for so long your mind will be numb and bored out of itself, so keeping something to stimulate your brain is necessary to not find yourself longing to go do something else.

7. Keep a running tally that you update after you log off each time. You should still never expect it to drop the next time, but having a long list of tallies will motivate you to feel like your closer to completing what you've sought out to do.

*If you don't have a stealth class leveled but you do have a 90 then be aware of the following:At level 90 your aggro radius is significantly decreased, meaning you can bypass all the mobs on the ramps (i.e. turbulent squall and empyrean assassin) as long as you run up the very edge of the ramp on top of the barrier. I've done this multiple times with my hunter but if I ever stray away from the edge into the middle of the barrier I pull the whole ramp. I haven't tried skipping other mobs this way but if you don't have a stealth class I would experiment where you can skip packs and then just kill the unavoidable ones.

Your Probability of Seeing the Mount Drop Over Time

Here's a link to an artical and probability calculator that has truly opened my eyes to how cumulative probability really works!(Most of my information is derived from it)

Based on the input I've put into the calculator as I've played with it a bit, the pattern of increased probability seems to follow a curve where x is the amount of times you've killed Altairus and y is the probability of seeing the mount drop. Your probability will increase at a steady rate at first until it eventually tapers off and flattens asymptotically on a certain number (in this case it means a 100% chance of seeing it drop once) meaning you will never have a guaranteed 100% chance to see it drop but it will get close.

Assuming the drop chance is 1% (according to Wowhead) this means if you ran VP 917 times you will have a 99.99% chance of seeing it drop at least once. Thankfully you don't have to run it that many times since your chances start getting pretty good around 60-70%. If you want to test this out, make a macro to /roll and mentally choose a random number between 1-100. Count how many times you have to roll in order to get the number you chose and repeat this several times with different numbers each time. Your chance of getting the exact number you chose is 1%.

In my experience of doing /roll testing, I have gotten as low as 27 attempts but never more than 121. This means if you run 3 hourly resets each day then the mount will most likely drop within 8-10 days. I've put together a table of your chance of seeing it drop every single hourly reset as well as your probability of never seeing it drop in the amount of attempts you've made so far (which is your cumulative probability subtracted from 100%) just to give you perspective. I did round to the nearest tenth since I thought it was irrelevant to go any smaller of decimal.

This is for you to know that seeing it drop is not "impossible" (far from it), it's probable if you invest a small amount of time each day!

edit: after 6 days (a few days after posting this) and on my 86th run, the mount dropped for me! My heart skipped a couple minutes of beating but I'm ok now.I had a 57.9% chance of seeing it drop in the amount of runs I did. Here is a screenshot of the drop!

Please upvote if you found my information helpful!

Happy hunting!

Comment by Pacifista

Im on 38th run :/, hope I can get it soon running it with a mage in around 5-8min a run depending if I accidentally pull a few mobs on the way to boss.

Comment by Guy19

Just saw on BMAH for 20 K - no bids. Kinda meh, though, because that's a lot for a mount you can farm so well. You can solo on normal until it drops. Like I said, kinda meh.

Comment by Ospreyfalcon

Just a tip for people running the instance: After you kill Altairus, just hop off the platform into the air, you will get teleported to the beginning of the instance, no running back or dying needed!

Oh and as a feral druid: Charred Glyph! Combined with Feline Swiftness and you can do an Altairus run in under 3 minutes.To track the reset instance counter, I use the addon Instancecounters. You right-click on it instead of selecting your portrait and rightclicking to select "Reset all instances", and it does it for you while keeping track of the number of your runs per hour, and also tells you when they reset, regardless of character you're on.

Comment by Mydge

How To Run Normal VP As A Non-Stealthie*Consider each group of mobs as Group 1, Group 2 etc. Hopefully this helps, as some mobs cant be walked around. Done as a 90 Fire Mage (470), had no problems killing groups of mobs. Takes ~15 min/run.

Group 1: KillGroup 2: Skip - run on edge of bridgeLurking Tempest

Group 3: Skip - run on edge of ramp Group 4: Skip - run on edge of ramp Group 5: Kill (watch push back if you are still on ramp edge)Lurking Tempest

Group 6: KillLurking Tempest

Group 7: KillBoss: Grand Vizier Ertan - as ranged very easy. Simple nuke (1.8mil hp), takes around 30 seconds. Feel free to use Cooldowns as you will be autobuffed on Altairus.

Comment by kiwis

Comment by maxxxbear

Comment by WoWman95

As an assassin rogue (490 ilvl) w/o nightstalker it took 3.5min. After changing to nightstalker it only took 2.5min, so if u plan on faring this, grab nightstalker.

Comment by jmack20093

I am able to run this in about 5 minutes on my lvl 90 Shadow Priest. As long as you have the talent Spectral Guise. Basically if you cannot run around a mob just Spectral Guise around it. I only have to kill one boss, one drake and the boss that drops the mount.

Comment by TheWheatOne

Some quick calculations on farm and chance:

Flat chance 1/110 of dropping on normal. This does not change. You could get it the first run, or get to the theoretical binomial limit below. I will be using Binomial Poisson Distribution in calculations.

Farm is assumed to be 5 runs per hour, and all 24 hours of farming per day. I will also consider a "reasonable" farm rate of 3 hours (15 runs) per day, if by all means you have a job or school or family to take care of.

If very lucky within binomial 33.33% (1 out of 3 people) will get this within 9 hours of straight farming. Reasonable farm rate at 3 days.

On average, people will get this within binomial 66.67% (2 out of 3 people) at 1 day of straight farming. Reasonable farm rate at 8 days.

If EXTREMELY unlucky, at 95.83% (between 22 & 23, out of 24 people will have gotten it before you), you'll have to farm this for a staggering 2 days 22 hours! Reasonable farm rate at 3 weeks 2 days 1 hour.

With all theoretical computer simulated testing, 1 million (out of 1 million) people will be virtually guaranteed to get this within 1 week 6 days 8 hours of straight farming; or at a reasonable farm rate of 3 months 2 weeks 1 day 2 hours. If you need to farm this longer than that, consider yourself cursed by a demon.

In other words: DO NOT EXPECT TO GET THIS ON ANY RUN ON ANY HOUR OF ANY DAY. You'll just be disappointed. Count yourself blessed that this is not requiring heroic. Remember, patience and diligence always wins out in the end. Think of it as a pleasure run of how far your character has progressed in power, instead of an endless farm stresser. In fact, you can actually get rich simply by farming this area; vendor trash, and sell BoEs for high prices. Any class should be able to do this efficiently solo with MoP epic gear.

Obviously stealth helps a lot, but is not required. You can actually pass many mobs without stealth simply by going around smartly, so learn the routes well. I was able to pass 12 mob groups max, no lie. It is rare though as it too relies on RNG for about half. Still, saving 5-8 minutes each time really adds up, especially with non-dps roles which can take much longer to clear per mob group. Not to mention it lowers the repair bill.

If for whatever reason you fall, you can use a slipstream at the entrance to teleport back to the platform point after you defeated the first boss per run. When done killing Altairus just drop down a ledge into the abyss to teleport back to the entrance, but do not run and jump too far out or the vortex won't lift you.

Good luck to all!

P.S. Downvote any person that adds "Got on X.X patch" and/or "Took X amount of runs for me to get this". They add nothing helpful and are just ego-celebration spamming, effectively trash, that push down the many helpful comments I've seen here by people that work hard on giving guides and tips to getting this mount effectively.

Comment by Enterthevoid

This has been my favorite mount for a very long time, but I never had the patience to start farming it. Today I finally mustered the nerve to do so. Here are a few tips on the state of mind you have to keep while farming it and the fastest way to do it as a class that cannot stealth or camouflage. I did it as a frost DK (level 90, obviously).

- Kill the first pack. You cannot avoid it. - Same goes with the two Armored Mistrals on the bridge. - You can skip all trash on the ramp. Simply walk exactly at the edge of the ramp, and watch out, since the adds walk around, and if they are facing the edge, you will aggro them. If so, just wait for them to turn around and then pass, it would take less time than killing them. - Kill the next pack. - Now if you walk in the exact middle of the Cloud Princes, you can skip them. - Kill Grand Vizier Ertan. - On the next platform, kill the Turbulent Squalls. - Here you can skip both the Young Storm Dragon and the Empyrean Assasins. Wait for them to turn around and simply walk past them, hug the wall so that you do not pull the Dragon. - Hit the Howling Gales once so that they do not throw you out of the platform. - On this platform, you can skip absolutely everything. Simply walk as far left as possible past the mobs, walk around the pillar and behind the Dragon until you get to the Turbulent Squalls. - AoE the Squalls. - Kill Altarius (make sure you are standing in the Upwind) - Jump out of the platform, get out, Reset all Instances, repeat.

You have a limit of 5 runs per hour, but I could not enter randomly and it was bugging me. I think it was for the following reason, but I am not sure. Say, you enter at 20:30. You clear it the first time by 20:40. You repeat that until you get your 5th clear at 21:10 and you Reset all Instances once more. Now you cannot enter until 21:30. Then, you enter, and you clear it by 21:35. Ah, but now you cannot enter again. You will only be able to enter at 21:40, because you have killed it 5 times since 20:40. This was confusing me for quite some time but it's quite simple once you understand it.

And here is how I kept myself going. Do not expect this to drop. Don't look at the RNG - imagine you are doing a quest where you need to kill the boss 100 times to get the mount. You must not feel disappointed for not getting the mount after every kill, but you must feel happy that you are 1 kill closer to 100 kills (When you will supposedly get it). You will probably get it by then, but if not, then just keep going. Tell yourself that you are already past 100 kills and the mount should drop very soon. Also, the people here who claim to be at 200, 300 kills without mount and what not are very rare cases. I was expecting to farm this for days and I ended up getting it on my 15th kill. Watch TV, listen to music, talk on Skype, do whatever you want to keep your mind busy. After 4-5 clears you will start doing this mechanically and you will really not require any focus at all.

In my opinion, this is the most beautiful, majestic mount in the game and it is a must have for every collector! Good luck to those who decide to farm this jewel!

Comment by benx2011

55 runs so far and still counting.

2/6/13 - 70 runs so far and still counting

2/8/13 - 85 runs and still counting

Comment by lexanx

Got it after 37 runs , the same day i started ;)

Comment by Seph1

If you have been farming this mount, or plan to start I guarantee it drops off normal Vortex Pinnacle.

You can easily solo the place at 90, I did on my Warrior and got it to eventually drop.

Don't fret, if you keep at it I am sure you will get it! And I hope this motivates you to believe it will drop!

Happy Farming!

Comment by Frostpanzer

If you wanna to exit fast .Just jump down .

Comment by Virtuoso95

I finally got the mount after alot of runs...130 - 160, lost count.Just make sure you aren't thinking about it when grinding, it WILL eventually drop when you are least expecting it.Good luck!

Comment by rickygabrielbird

I have just started farming for this on my 90 BM Hunter ilvl478.

Works out at just over 3mins from the start to downing the 2nd boss. Use camouflage just before the first mobs and it should last you until the 1st boss, providing you change aspect too.

Every single mob can be easily avoided, you will only need use Readiness to refresh your camouflage after you shoot the orbs to pass the bridge.

Obviously, once the 2nd boss is down, just jump off the edge to get back to the start. You won't die from falling into nothingness so don't worry! :)

Good luck all.

Comment by mrbrent328

If you're a warlock farming this mount I would suggest using Glyph of Eye of Kilrogg, and you can skip a lot of the mobs.

Comment by smackthekids

To any Warriors looking to seriously farm this mount until you get it, here's a quick guide how to go from start to finish (2nd boss) in about 2 minutes flat.Gylph for Enraged Speed, Death from Above, and bring some Drums of Speed and/or Dark water potions.Start by running directly at the middle of the first mob, Heroic Leap thru him, you won't aggro if you jumped at Max distance. I usually just walk&kill the 2 mobs on the bridge, they die before u make it to the other end of the bridge.Run around the very edge to avoid aggro for next area, at the end, Heroic Leap directly thru the next mob. Past them is 2 large adds, walk RIGHT in the MIDDLE and they wont attack. Zerg 1st boss. Take tornado portal, then walk up the LEFT side; if you followed so far, the 2 ghost mobs will be at the end and u can walk right past.Heroic Throw 1st Orb, Charge 2nd Orb to avoid knock back. Heroic Leap thru the patrolling ghosts/dragon, walk up LEFT side again, right side has an add at the end who is much easier to aggro, idk why. Zerg 2nd boss, jump off, repeat. This method nets me 5 runs in about 15min counting load times/guild chatting, much quicker if you're dedicated and maximize potions and cooldowns.Sadly, I've gotten nearly all the extremely rare dungeon/raid mount drops, but can't get this to drop! Good luck!

Comment by sickbox

Here is a list of mount drops from Instances, Raids, and World Bosses to save some looking around.

Comment by Atryis

Tonight i just got shot by a lucky star. Im a lvl 84 DK and iv only ran Vortex Pinnacle honestly about 7-9 times (i cant remember but i know it wasnt alot) and i was in the dungeon finder, it dropped and i won it! i am so siked because iv always wanted a drake mount since i first started playing a couple months ago. the only thing is that i still need to save up for artisan riding. But i still got it :)

Comment by Terrorshark

To all those posting "got it after x number of solves." Why bother posting? We know it drops, whether it dropped for you on your first try or the 200th, it does not alter the chances it will drop for those who are farming it nor do your comments offer any insight into bettering one's chances. I don't mean to be rude but your comments are just as useful as saying "GOT IT FIRST TRY LOOKS SO COOL" The only reason I post this is I feel sorry you guys getting downrated into oblivion for innocent comments, just know that you're wasting both your time typing and the readers with comments like that. Congrats on your mounts, though.

Comment by Akitnaya

I got this mount after multiple runs, soloing Vortex Pinnacle. 27 to be exact. I 1st used to do it w/o camouflage (I'm a BM hunter,) but soon learned how 2 run along the edges off of videos on YouTube. My bf kept taunting me saying that i'd never get it & to stop wasting my time so I can't wait till we sign on together so I can laugh in his face!

*For ne class that can stealth/camo...DO IT! Watch the videos on YouTube on how to do it if you don't know already!

Happy farming guys & good luck!

Comment by Paradox808

So after farming stonecore for Slabhide's mount, I got it on my 30 something try. I was so psyked up. I decided to go to Vortex Pin just to try a few runs. Wasn't planning on farming it all day like SLabhide since I was happy that I got one of the rare drakes already that day. Sure enough, second kill.... I see purple... Reins of The Drake of The North WInd drop! I thought I was dreaming. 2 rare drakes in the same day. I thought getting Slabhide's mount on my 30th try was lucky. But North Drake on my second kill? Can you believe it?

Comment by Terrorshark

To all those posting "got it after x number of solves." Why bother posting? We know it drops, whether it dropped for you on your first try or the 200th, it does not alter the chances it will drop for those who are farming it nor do your comments offer any insight into bettering one's chances. I don't mean to be rude but your comments are just as useful as saying "GOT IT FIRST TRY LOOKS SO COOL" The only reason I post this is I feel sorry you guys getting downrated into oblivion for innocent comments, just know that you're wasting both your time typing and the readers with comments like that. Congrats on your mounts, though.

Comment by Terrorshark

To all those posting "got it after x number of solves." Why bother posting? We know it drops, whether it dropped for you on your first try or the 200th, it does not alter the chances it will drop for those who are farming it nor do your comments offer any insight into bettering one's chances. I don't mean to be rude but your comments are just as useful as saying "GOT IT FIRST TRY LOOKS SO COOL" The only reason I post this is I feel sorry you guys getting downrated into oblivion for innocent comments, just know that you're wasting both your time typing and the readers with comments like that. Congrats on your mounts, though.

Comment by lojiloji

I've decided to run this instance 5 times every day, this to make sure it's not too much of a grind..It takes about an hour to run it 5 times, this because i do kill all the mobs upto the 2nd boss. I can advise every enchanter to do so. After a typical 1 hour (5 times) run I have made 65g in regular gold loot1214g in volatile air loot288g in hypnotic dust500g in small heavenly shards602g in lesser celestial essence and 300g in boe blue items

Cataclysm enchanting mats go for a lot in my AH. If killing all mobs is worth the gold ofcourse depends on your server.Happy hunting!

Comment by Zyrinx

Probably all been said, but as a hunter, i killed 0 trash mobs unless i made a mistake. Camo before the 1st bridge gets you to the 1st boss. Camo when you land gets you to the orbs on the bridge, and you can run past the ramp mobs while visible.

To stay sane I always tried to better my fastest boss kill times (14 seconds for Altairus) and my run times; 3:12 I think was my fastest, only time I ever used the stopwatch (/sw).

Good luck.

Comment by perculia

I've been farming this on/off since MoP hit (~400 runs). As a rogue, I've found Burst of Speed (does not break stealth anymore in 5.2) with the first-tier talent Nightstalker stacking makes the runs go faster than before in 5.2. This brings you up to 213% runspeed stealthed and the farming runs are slightly over two minutes.

It may be worth dragging the mobs right before Altairus up as you fight him, as I've had them drop up to 12 Volatile Air. Just Blade Flurry as you kill Altairus.(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##perculia##DELIM##

Comment by Akitnaya

This mount looks beautiful in shadow form! (I btw don't have it.)

Comment by oscarucb

The SavedInstances addon tracks the 5-instance-per-hour limit, making it easier to plan your farming runs, and avoid locking yourself out of an upcoming event (eg raid night).

Comment by Hinalover

Thought I'd at least make some suggestions for those Windwalker Monks out there farming this mount. I just started farming this, but given the few attempts I have done, I think I have my strat down.

First up, I have Momentum Tier 1 talent selected. I've found this to be an extremely useful talent for quick farming runs. What I tend to do is to try to time it so that the buff from my first Momentum is just about to expire and roll the second time so that I take full advantage of both buffs.

For the first pull I run up steps and then Flying Serpent Kick (FSK) all the way to the first bridge. I pull the first two sets of adds and Spinning Crane Kick (SCK) that pack down. The next set could require two pulls depending on gear but due to me being in full Throne of Thunder gear, it usually takes me one pull. But the next 3-4 packs (4th being the pack right before the next bridge) I try to group up. I use the pillars next to the bridge to group everything up and SCK them to death (either on the edge at the bottom of the steps or up top, near the top of the steps). Next I line up the center of the bridge and once I get to the end I FSK past the next pack. Most times I am able to skip them, but there are a few cases where I will not be aligned correctly and accidently pull them.

After that boss, I will cross the gap. The next pull, I will run up the steps and FSK to pull the next 6 adds (the 4 Turbulent Squall and the 2 Empyrean Assassin) and SCK that pack to death. If you get poisoned you can Detox or let it fall off.

Hug the right wall so that you don't pull the Young Storm Dragon. Next up are the Howling Gale. What I tend to do is use my Tier 2 ability on the first one (me personally I use Chi Wave) and then I cast Storm, Earth, and Fire (SEF) on the second. If your SEF gets pushed back before it's able to hit the target, go to the center of the bridge and stay either to the far right or left so that your in a dead zone where the whirlwinds will not hit you. Afterwards wait for your Tier 2 ability comes off cooldown and use it again for the second one. Once you get past the second add, cast your SEF again to despawn it.

Now hug either the far left or far right side of the steps, and at the top perform a FSK to the far side of the platform. You may or may not pull some Empyrean Assassin with you but SCK them down with the 6 or so Turbulent Squall on the ramp that you cannot avoid.

Finally go up the ramp and kill Altairus for the mount. Make sure to keep your back to the oncoming wind so that you have infinite energy. After you kill Altairus, run back and jump off the side. You will be teleported to the front of the entrance. Rinse and repeat until either your 5 dungeon per hour is done or you get the mount. For me, as stated I'm in full Throne of Thunder gear, it is taking me about 4 minutes a run, which is a bit slower than my Stonecore runs but still fairly fast.

Comment by Greenthumper

So I have run this instance on normal 400 times over a period of 25 days and so far no mount...

First, I wanted to verify that this mount actually still does drop on normal mode?

Second, I have seen it posted that this mount has an estimated drop rate of 1%, however, the portrait of this item on wowhead has the drop rate at .41%?

Thanks for the help! I will keep you updated on progress...

Comment by Zagrul

Having Drake of the West Wind already, I really felt the need to start completing my collection of all the "wind" drakes. Through some research (thanks to WoWhead) I stumbled upon this mount, and started seriously farming it. I ran Vortex Pinnacle a bunch of times on heroic (feeling my chances would be better than normal) and it never dropped once...story of my life! :/

Then, a friend enlightened me on how I could run it on normal 5x an hour, wait an hour and re-run it again 5x more by simply "resetting all instances". Not aware of this prior, I gave it a shot and the damn Reins of the Drake of the North Wind drops! All those heroic runs out the window. -_-

It's really ironic how this mount has a higher chance (0.8%), according to WoWhead, for normal mode...and then, a lower chance (0.7%) on heroic. But hey, RNG is RNG! I love this mount nonetheless, and love its color scheme. It's got a special place on my action bar. :D

Comment by remerson73

I saw this mount drop at 11:30 pm last night as I was on my sham doing dps so I rolled on it :( no luck I got a 13% need roll on it err. A dam hunter took my mount lol. I have 7 level 90s and this was the first time I have ever seen this mount drop in a random, in the 4 years I been playing wow. I'm 15 runs into waiting on this mount to drop with my 90 rogue. I have daggers, axes, belts ,helms and have only been killing the first boss and the 2ed boss that drops this mount. It takes me about 20 mins to run it 5 times. meaning I have to wait 40 more mins for the cool down to run out. The 5 run cool down starts just as you start your first run. As I have timed. 5 runs 20mins + 40 mins after waiting for the cool down and your ready to go for more. So don't wait one hour after your last run. Time your self and see how long it takes you and wait the rest of an hour from what it took. I hope this helps some one looking to get this great mount. Wish me luck ill keep you posted on my runs. I would have to say if your a horde do TB every day because they win 90% of the time and the TB marks can buy this mount it cost 200 marks. They add up fast doing the quests in and out side + the winning quest is 300 honor, gold and marks x3.

Comment by krakokot

Comment by fehim

i am the only one here who made more than 250+ run and still no mount drop ?

Comment by 4gotnsun

Dropped first time I ever ran this on my shammy. I believe this is Blizz paying me back for the hundreds and hundreds of runs in Sethekk, Baron, and Kara.

Comment by vandeverre

Quite amazingly, this beautiful drake dropped for me on my second solo run through normal mode in Vortex Pinnacle. Lvl 90 guardian druid here currently with il447 gear. Using stealth and skipping trash, took all of 5 minutes between the first two bosses before reset, then repeat. Here's hoping my good luck gets passed onto others who try the same. Definitely recommend the normal mode/reset strategy to increase your odds, however many runs it takes. Considering the number of times I had to run through Magister's Terrace for the Swift White Hawkstrider -- indeed, 100s -- this was both surprising and greatly relieving. =)

Comment by mychatposts

I don't know why I do thisThe pain is oh so clear150 runs and he me shunsWhy is this drake so dear?I pray to the godsI promise lotsI'll be good from hither on,If they let me haveThis drake I craveI'll praise them dusk and dawn.What sucketh mostI'll say it nowIs when I win this wyrm,I'll ride him once or twice for showThen another mount I'll yearn

Comment by unholydriver

I can confirm that this mount is also sold at the Black Market. It was going for 27,900 gold today on Velen; of course this will vary from realm-to-realm.

Good luck to all those trying to attain it!

Comment by elionor

a good item to have when your running this dungeon is the Salyin Battle Banner an easy disengage you just run to the boss then pop it to disappear just be careful that the scout does not pull anymore cause they will come after you face towards the wall or something when you pop it. But be warned there is a 10 minute CD so if you die on boss or the trash kicks your ass your going either have to wait for CD or do the run normally killing everything this also means you will likely have to clear the 2nd half of the instance up to the boss if you dont have any DEs but at least you dont have to worry about the first part if you play your cards right

Comment by Arazan1

Got this mount last week after 179 runs on normal! It took awhile but finally did. The people who get it sooner grats to you... you are one of the lucky ones!

Comment by m33ps

Just dropped for me after 400+ (normal mode) attempts across different alts.

Using a rogue does seem quickest with the sprint spec. Was back at Altairus before cd's were back up each time.

Good luck to you all.

Comment by Fields25

I almost feel terrible, but I was extremely bored and decided to solo this on normal for a little.

First run, nothing, already bored, but I said to myself "what if it just takes one more run"

So as I always do, one more run.

2nd run - Drops.

Good luck to everyone, it's a great looking mount.

Comment by danandijvie

I've made a short guide on how to solo run this instance in 4 minutes. May be warrior specific.

Comment by iamprun

As of 04.08.13, i got this on my 30th run.

Comment by inzomniack

So, i've been farming this on and off for a month or so now, was looking to bolster my mount collection up to 200 and with the exception of raid drops, and ZG, figured i had all the other dungeon mounts.

A week or two i thought i would watch a farming video, make sure i was doing it efficiently - found a warrior one, which reminded me i could use a teleport mechanic (they used heroic leap, im a mage so i can blink) through some mobs

Last night I thought i might turn my hand at making a Mage - how to / 4 min video (tried to do this once or twice last week, and stuffed the pathing up so hard aggro came out my nose)

Comment by benx2011

as a 522 Survival hunter, i just run through all mobs, then when they are packed, just spam Multi Shot, just 2 or 3 MS can wipe them out at once. i do every run in less than 5 mins.

Comment by ttpenquin

Believe it or not I saw this drop two times in 2 runs. I recently met this rogue in Gold shire through Dueling. He was showing me his mounts when this one came up. I paused him there and asked him how he got it and he said it was a rare drop from this instance. He also mentioned he got it on his third try. He offers to run me. I accept. He runs me on my 80 rogue. First run, Nothing drops. 2nd Run and it drops! Buuuuut..... I stayed near the begging to avoid dying, resulting in me not being able to loot the mount. Have seeing it once I thought It wouldn't drop again. On my next try, 3RD RUN It drops again! 2 times in a row! And I got it that time. I don't know what happened here but I'm sure glad I got this sexy mount. If you've been farming it for awhile don't give up! You'll get it eventually!

Comment by ceasure

I highly recommend killing everything up to Altairus if you are farming Reins of the Drake of the North Wind. Why? Because Volatile Air drops off of most of the mobs and various greens/blues (In the range of level 78-81). In the 5 instance lockout I would go to the AH and make an average of 2.5-3.5k gold on items that dropped. Makes the grind seem like less of a pain if you're making gold from it at the same time. Plus after 127 runs when my mount dropped I had made a total of 81k gold just from the items that dropped there. Definitely worth it.

Comment by tattooed1976

Mine dropped real quick, got lucky I guess. Dropped in regular on my 6th run or so :)

Comment by alecrezyrk

I killed this dragon so many dang times now I started farming the stonecore drake, got that in like 6 tries, and still on the north wind drake >< oh well ill get it one of these times

Comment by elionor

Comment by Rodpod

1. Stealth and spam "Burst of speed" (choose it if you dont have it) and skip all trash.

2. Kill first boss. (Cant be skipped)

3. Use "Throw" on the two orbs blocking your way.

4. Use "Vanish" after orbs and spam "Burst of speed" til 2:nd boss.

5. Kill 2:nd boss and skin the bastard if he doesn´t drop the mount! ;-)

6. Jump down from the edge to get teleported back to the entrance.

7. Go out, reset and repeat until you get bored or really happy!

(pls comment if you have helpfull ideas, hope I can get back in the instance now...)

Comment by Nickoman8725

Just grabbed mine today, 2nd kill.

Comment by Faydelity

I'm curious as to how many runs everyone has attempted to get this mount. I'm currently on my 106th run and I have yet to see it. Is anyone else running it this many times and not seeing it drop or is it just me? I've been running it on Normal and a few Heroics.

Comment by jessicaTFC

Finally dropped for me today on my 116th run!Ran it on Normal only & while the instance is tedious, it was very easily soloable by my 90 Frost Mage ilvl 522 & probably any other max level class.Happy hunting everyone :3

Comment by Sharwin22

Started farming this mount again today, after having a long break from farming mounts.As an ilvl 538 ele shaman wearing resto gear, I completed it in 10min. I did it on reg, because there is no need to waste time doing it on heroic.I killed every mob on the way to the boss - farming a bit of rep while I'm at it.

Since it's only a 10min run, I will have time to spare every hour if I go any faster - which is doable for a lot of classes.You can only enter 5 instances per hour - this is account wide (or at least for that server).

To exit quickly, you just jump off the side and you fall for a little bit, then start spinning back up, then be ported to the start of the instance.

Edit: on my ilvl 532 MM hunter, this took 7min if I killed everything on the way there. It took 2 min when I used camouflage and aspect of the cheetah - I could run pass everything except the first boss - 16sec kill - and of course killing Altarius - 12sec kill with favorable wind.

Killing everything also resulted in collecting 26 Volatile Air - about 5g each on the AH on Antonidas - and 1 BoE rare item almost every run.

Comment by homiebrah

Not sure what takes more dedication here.

To get the mount itself, or to keep count of the number of times trying to get the mount.

Comment by Methiados

Dropped for me today 11/17/2013 on Aggrammar - 3:59 a.m. server time.

Comment by Soybeanie

Listed on the BMAH for a starting price of 20,000g.

Comment by Eryndes

Just did the Vortex Pinnacle dungeon.. The mount dropped and I got it. I rolled need 86, another player rolled need 84. I'm so happy now. It was the third time I ran the dungeon with dungeon finder. Wow. 3. damn. runs. and I just got it. VERY happy.

Comment by Yaseki

Decided to give this a try today on normal mode and gues what.... mount dropped on first attempt <3

Comment by bloodpaw

After 131 total victories the mount dropped! Good luck all!

Comment by JH24

If you have access to Timeless Isle, it might be worth it to farm for Scuttler Shells from Ancient Spineclaws and Monstrous Spineclaws. (Respectively 10% and 50% drop chance)

If you play a character which doesn't have a way to bypass the trash mobs scuttler shells make you invisible to the these mobs (unless running directly into them)

This way you only have to fight the first boss and Altarius and can do 5 runs in 20 minutes. With scuttler shells having a timer of 60 minutes you could do up to 12-15 runs on each shell.

When you reach the instance limit log out of the game and the timer of the scuttler shell will stop as well. (If you want to stop the timer in-game you'll loose the shell) Unless you're farming for gold/loot/Volatile orbs using scuttler shell's makes farming a lot less tedious.

I'm now on my 116th run but thanks to these shells I don't mind farming as much anymore. You can have a maximum of 10 scuttler shells at the same time.

Comment by Ozzayel

I'm now on 255 runs and no drop :(And there's more uncounted runs on top of that from when it was current content and i never saw it.

Will update as I continue to grind it.As a hunter I can complete a run in just over 3 minutes, but even being able to do 5 runs very fast it's getting v annoying at this point.

Update: Now 300...

Finally got it on run 340.

Comment by Coldpaw

Finally managed to get this after my 12th attempt... One step closer to the mount collecting achievement.

Comment by dinothundar

Ran Vortex Pinnacle today and got him on the first try when I was just farming rep, it was a nice surprise! Then he dropped again the third time I ran it... there goes my WoW luck. :I

Comment by JRxPHANTOM

25 runs in so far. Interestingly, I think it is a good idea to kill the trash leading up to him. The Volatile Air on some servers can sell for a good amount (7g for 1 air on my realm) and they seem to have a high drop rate. Even though I haven't got the mount yet from farming, I've made a few thousand gold extra just on the Volatile Airs from the mobs leading up to him. 210g for 30 Air.

Comment by searodent2001

Was in Uldum today and decided to stop on by the Vortex Pinnacle. This beauty dropped off the boss on my first attempt. I was totally shocked. Dont give up folks!

Comment by lmgodard

I have Mims head, Invincible, Experiment 12-B, A'lar, Onyxia, Alys firebird, Stonecore to name a few and yet...still working on this one

At least 307 so far on my rogue

Will update when I get it, I can almost guarantee that I'll probably have a record of how many kills this will take lol

Edit: 348 kills and finally got it!I don't care about the downvotes. I'm so happy that I never have to run this thing again!Good luck to those who are still farming it, I hope you see it soon! :)

Comment by r8dj

Still drops on normal mode. ~110 runs to see a drop personally.

Comment by Tsode

Got one from my first Unclaimed Black Market Container for 12k

Comment by Aorzia

got mine today after 65 tries on normal mode

Comment by Grummulthrus

Fastest way to do these runs as a Warlock is to go Demo with Mannoroth's Fury and Glyph of Soul Consumption. Kill the three Armored Mistrals with Fel Flame (they move slowly; can't use vortexes in combat). Run to first boss, LOS the train, demon form, immolation aura, burn boss while trash dies to passive AOE, and loot. Next part works the same way. Got my run times down to < 4 min this way.

Comment by Grummulthrus

Statistical information -- or, why you shouldn't give up.

Assume 0.8% is the true drop rate. The chance of seeing this mount drop at least once is 1-.992^N, where N is the total # of runs you've done. So N = ceil(log(1-P)/log(.992)), which works in Matlab so I'm lazy about simplifying. Here's the number of runs at which you're P% likely to have seen the mount at least once:

Comment by Jazzycakes2

So like most people I've been soloing multiple instances for various bosses and have put together some statistical likelihood that I want to share with you all so that you can use this information as well to your own bidding.

I improve this by running this 7 times a week = 0.9394^7 = 64.56% Chance of no mounts droppingOR run this 21 times a week with 3 alts = 0.9394^21 = 26.91% Chance of no mounts (73.1% chance of at least 1 mount!)

This day the chance for nothing is (daily mounts) 0.9394 x 0.9804 x 0.9915 x 0.9887 =90.28% chance of nothing dropping - or 9.72% chance of one or more mounts dropping :)

Comment by EvilTroy

A quick note for those of us who can't stealth: at lvl 90 I've found that if I stay near the ledge in the pinnacle and pop nitro boosters and use some swiftness potions, I can get by a lot of trash (wait for them to turn their backs). No drop yet, but I can work on the computer and come back to the came to use boosters and/or potions every couple of minutes. If you would to burn right through it, it would probably only take 5 minutes by avoiding trash. Didn't see anyone mention this earlier, hope it helps, happy farming!

Comment by zogr

got this mount after 50+ kills, and made alot of gold from selling the greens and A LOT of gold from all the volatile air. now i have every dungeon mount in wow!

Comment by Beana21

I know how angry people will be when they read this... I understand because this NEVER happens to me... So I decide I want this mount....I do Vortex Pinnacle Heroic out of curiosity and boredom, I knew the mount wouldn't drop....And yep....It DROPPED....First time on that toon. Long time since I've done it on any toon. I realize fully it's like winning the lottery and damn I'm happy and thankful :)

Comment by dchriest25

As of 4/07/14 the instance per hour limit has been raised from 5 to 10 per hour.

Happy farming!

Comment by Gelidus

Went there to start farming for the first time tonight. Dropped very first run!

Comment by rzzr

Based on the data from Jazzycakes2 here is a spreadsheet that will help you know the odds of a mount dropping if you are doing multiple runs and maybe using more than one character to farm them.Will depress some people and hopefully encourage others!

Comment by Clern

Got it after 150 runs. I am a rogue and I highly recommend speccing into Nightstalker and Burst of Speed. You can finish the run for the mount in under three minutes in semi-decent flex gear. (545 gear here.) Best advice I have for any one trying to farm it is this: Never give up, it will drop eventually if you keep it at.. Sell the drops you get, run it on a skinner, I made over 14k gold on these runs. See it as gold farming as the priority and the mount as an added bonus and you will feel much better about the farm. Good luck ladies and gentlemen.

Comment by Dianora

164 run, still no mount.

Comment by Runawaynow

No one cares to read comments that say how many runs it took, so I'm not here to say (just) that ;)

With the upped instance reset limit to 10, instead of treating every run as "Maybe it will drop this time" I tried to treat it as "How fast can I do this run?" and kept track of my best times and tested different routes to get a faster time for total time spent in each run. This made it less of a chore and a bit more of a personal mini-game challenge...? I guess.

Anyway I'm betting goblin engineer rogue is the outright winner for fastest possible time of any class, but I was doing these runs as engineering survival hunter, ilvl 541. My fastest total in-instance time was 2:51 on run 257 only 4 runs before it finally dropped.(The addon OQueue keeps track of each instance time automatically, and Rarity keeps track of rare item drop attempts. WoW also has an in-game timer if you don't want extra addons, just use /timer in-game to open it.)

So challenge yourself in some way to make the runs more fun instead of a chore, and good luck! :D

Comment by Jazzycakes2

After 150 runs in stonecore, finally got that drake.

During my first Vortex Pinnacle I was thinking "is this going to be a long run back to reset this instance" while killing the boss.

Then I saw that sweet purple spot in the loot box.

Stonecore mount looks heaps better though.

Comment by Raikenkaji

i was fortunate enough to get this beauty on my second attempt on an instance group a few weeks ago. when we got in the healer left group right away after seeing the dungeon and another dps quit right after. I was debating to leave when one of the dps druids offered to heal and tank joined the group and we ended up finishing the instance with 4 people the reigns dropped and we all went for it i was lucky enough to win the roll but they were all good sports about it. this made this mount so memorable to me

Comment by Rakoi

I'm a level 90 destruction warlock and decided to solo the Vortex Pinnacle to try to get this mount. I mainly used a Fel Imp to help me kill things/heal but I got maybe 10k damage from things at the most. I used a Voidlord on things over 1m hit points. I got this first try! I'm stoked, I normally have okayish luck but this was fantastic! To all the level 90's out there, you should try it! It's easy to solo and if you can't do it just take 1 friend. Hopefully you'll have the luck I had but if not, keep trying! It's a great way to try to get it instead of buying it. Good luck! :)

Edit: I also had a soulstone on myself just in case I died, make sure you remember to do that. Also I don't know if it makes a difference or not but my kill time for Altairus was around 13 seconds. It probably doesn't but if anyone's interested, that's how long it took. :)

Comment by shadeymcbones

got both vitreous stone drake and this1 on my 8th try today :) guess you just have to be extremely lucky

Comment by Voltaision

for all mages looking to do this it is super easy just make sure you have improved invisibility so you can invis past all trash mobs and only have to wait 1.5 min for it to finish a cooldown if your not properly geared for it make sure you have the glyph of evocation so that you can heal quickly I got it in 7 days with 115 runs good hunting!

Comment by dmbardal

I recommend everyone that are trying to get this mount to keep looting everything.Sell or disenchant everything you get.

I had ~60 slots free when farming, and after a few days.72 runs later. I had the mount and 8700g more than when I entered and started farming it.

Comment by armerus

For those wanting to farm this mount, I recommend using Scuttler's Shell , as you don't need to fight any mobs other than the first boss before Altarius.

As of Warlords, this may no longer work due to the pandaria requirement Scuttler's Shell , sadly. (Damnit Blizzard why this was useful)

Comment by Bronham

This mount dropped for me today on my mage while soloing heroic Vortex Pinnacle. I recently began farming Chaos Orbs to use for tailoring (for Dreamcloth and ultimately Illusionary bags) and chose to farm Vortex Pinnacle and a couple dungeons in Caverns of Time. Vortex Pinnacle is the most profitable dungeon to farm for me because it drops tons of Volatile Air (I've gotten 50 in one run and they go for ~6-7 gold each on my server). It is an exceedingly easy heroic solo.

Take a portal to dalaran. Go to the Violet Citadel, up the stairs to the left there is a portal to the Caverns of Time. From there it is a relatively short flight south. I usually do it first then port back to dal (since I'm a mage), back to CoT and do a couple other heroics in CoT.

I got the drake after only 3 runs, I guess I'm super lucky. I wasn't even going for the mount, just the profitable Volatile Airs and the Chaos Orb. After using the mount, I very much like the model and it may replace my current go to mount. I was getting a little low on gold on my mage alt when I decided to farm these old heroics and I have made 2k in 3 days just vendoring everything except the orbs and volatiles. I got maybe 5 boe epics on the AH, 14 orbs, 150 airs as well. I could have made more selling the boe blues, de'ing things but to me it's not worth the effort.

There is no feat of strength achievement for this mount (like there is with the Raven Lord, Grand Black War Mammoth, etc) but personally I don't care about achievement points. Overall, I would very much recommend farming heroic Vortex Pinnacle.

Comment by Aoir

Well, I suppose luck/karma smiled on me today, because after only 12 runs of VP on normal, the drake dropped. Maybe to compensate for the 220 runs it took me through the Stonecore to get the Reins of the Vitreous Stone Drake.

Comment by kalutg

When I've started to farm for this mount I was laughing at how many tries it took to some of you to finally get it. Now I'm doing my 326th run ... Thank god I'm farming on my rogue and I can skip all the trash :(

Comment by strangeclouds

Finally got her on my hunter :) only took about 50 runs or so...

Comment by TimB1087

For those of you who are curious how many runs it takes, on average, for a player to get this mount to drop, then performing a simple calculation will get you the answer rather than thumbing through comments. Yes, I am fully aware that you could be super lucky and get it after 20 runs, or super unlucky and get it after 400 runs. However, once you near 100 runs, you begin to wonder how many everyone else did before getting theirs.

So, to find out, simply click on the 'Dropped by' tab, punch in the bottom number in your calculator and divide by the top number. That is, thus far, the average number of runs a player must complete before seeing the mount drop.

Again, this is just an average of everyone, which includes both the super lucky 20 run person and the super unlucky 400 run person. Your luck will vary, but this will let you know to not give up only after 50 runs.

Comment by Darkdefender

Oh my #$%^ing god just got it on my like. 5th? try, and it was my first heroic one as well!

Comment by Maritas

I can confirm this drops on normal - just got this baby tonight. Farming solid for about 2 weeks and resetting the instance - so about 7/10 runs a night. The shell from timeless isle works but if you're in there, might as well farm gold and the air - as well an the blues that still sell pretty good on my server.

So don't give up, keep resetting the instance and run it. Good luck.

Comment by Cordessa

Just got this beauty in a normal run as level 83. Thought it only dropped on HC, guess I was wrong. You do need to have Artisan Riding to "learn it", so had to use 5000 gold on a random alt to use the mount :/ It is soulbound, not account bound so you can't send it to a main and learn it that way.

Comment by TheEustass

Got it on my first try!

Comment by SHO57

This is a very easy farm for 90's, especially if you can stealth, although you have to kill the first boss to progress.I got it down to about 4-5 min per kill on a Rogue(i483) since after you kill Altairus you can just jump off the level and the wind will bring you back to the entrance.Haven't got the mount yet myself but I just started a day ago. Good luck everyone.Great looking drake model btw, never liked the proto drakes, or stone drakes, and the vanilla models were getting tiresome.

Comment by MasterchiefJ

I just got this collector's item after 137 runs on my hunter on Normal mode.

Some additional info with Sv hunter tips:

1. Make sure to switch to Aspect of the Hawk when fighting a boss and start off with a Black Arrow to get an early Lock n' Load proc. 2. Don't bother using Glyph of Camouflage, it will only slow you down. I can confirm that you can stealth past every mob with your pet out. 3. Definitely use Posthaste/Glyph of Disengage for more speed and use Disengage on CD. 4. If you accidentally pull a group and wanna have some fun, you can use Glyph of Explosive Trap to bounce mobs off the edge. 5. When attacking the orbs, put your pet on passive or it will just stay there for no reason. 6. Does the mount really drop on Normal mode? I'm on 125326968 runs and I still don't have it! Yes, it does...Have patience, you will get it!

Last but not least, don't drive yourself insane. Take a break if you feel you need one and challenge yourself in other ways (like having speed runs etc.). As a non-goblin/engineering hunter my record was 2:56. Good luck to all farmers!

Comment by Overtuned

Boss still drops since 6.0.2 went live? Have been running this dungeon on normal with several friends, but none of us have seen it dropped. We all did over more than 150 runs, and this our 3th day farming Altarius for the mount. Would like to see if anyone could confirm this. Thank you in advance.

Comment by Riipperi

Is this still dropping, can anyone confirm?

Comment by zoemoney

I got this drake right when cata came out and i was leveling and got this dungeon in lfg. I knew it was a rare drop but since I didn't even know about it before i got it and saw it drop my first time i assumed it had a high drop rate; it makes me happy knowing it doesn't and i have it

Comment by Omega90210

Definatley still drops, took me over 50 tries but i got the damn thing...worth it too! Used my 90 rogue, best way to farm this, stealth all the way to boss one, and boss two... and FYI dropped on normal. Good Luck!

Comment by vaalor

I am now at 451 kills and still no drop. I have Al'ar, the Ony drake, and Experiment 12-B, along with all new and original ZG mounts so I consider myself very lucky. Unfortunately this mount will not drop.

Comment by Woldenwolk

No effing way! Got it on the first try! Was the droprate changed to 100% for WoD?

Comment by Kavinsky1981

I did the runs as a lvl90 mage after WoW update 6.0.02. I was using greater invisibility, super nova and a load of blinks and blazing speeds to run run VPn in less than 3mins (on heroic it took a little longer). My ilvl at the time was 494. My fastest time on normal was 2m 41s and after 142 runs it finally dropped on normal while I wasn't even paying attention to the drop (I was chatting with guildies) and after 130 attempts I decided I would stop at 200. So I was doing it for the gold for gear and if I reached 200 I would quit. People that say they got it on their first drop are liars or just jerks for posting that they got it in their 1-10 try. I used the addon Rarity from cursegaming to keep count of how many times I ran it. It took 3 days (not consecutive hours) so good luck and happy hunting. Special thanks to Kavinsky for keeping me sane and entertained. Also, Rarity will let you know everything that DELVelanas said regarding percentages and odds.

Comment by hobbesmarcus

Tip for people farming the mount: obviously you can do it on normal and heroic, but after you kill Altairus and you want to exit the instance simply run off the edge. You won't die and in fact it teleports you to the start of the instance. Then you run out, change the difficulty and go back in. Much faster than running out or hearthing out.

Good luck!

Comment by turkesh

I run this on a level 90 Combat Rogue using Stealth with Nightstalker and Sprint with . All enemies can be snuck past except Grand Vizier Ertan and a pair of Howling Gales. Damage the Gales with Throw to prevent their knockback effect. Jump off the edge of the platform after killing and looting Altairus to be ported back to the front door. Run out, reset all instances, rinse and repeat. Roundtrip is under 2:30 door to door.

Comment by Spicywiener

Not sure when this occurred probably with patch 6.0.2 but its now possible to run the dungeon 10 times in an hour rather than 5 times before getting the "you've entered too many instances" error :D happy days MOAR FARMS! happy hunting people :D

Comment by JH24

524 tries with my Rogue, but finally got him although not with that character. Funnily enough I got him on my first try with my Death Knight afterwards. For some reason I got a nagging feeling I needed to switch characters, and I'm very glad I did.

It was so worth it.

If I didn't have Rogue (stealth + fast movement + Cloak of Shadows for Howling Gale), I would probably have given up eventually on any other character. Took me around 2 weeks with a few breaks inbetween.

Comment by DempaG

So... I don't know if anything have changed since the release of Warlords, or if I'm just super lucky, but I got this on my second run on my level 100 rogue. So for anyone that's thinking of farming this one, if may just be so that they have upped the drop rate some!

Comment by Random0009

I got mine after 60 runs, which is not bad. Awesome looking mount, especially in "lighter" shadow form (with glyph of shadow).

Comment by Frontareen

Got mine 3 minutes ago on my first try! :D As of 2014/12/28 I can confirm that it drops on NORMAL difficulty GL HF!

Comment by Rider777

Currently I am on attempt number 93.. Hopefully I will like this mount!

I will let you guys know how many it took when it finally drops. Good luck!

Comment by Rayvic

After 66 farming runs, I have finally obtained this mount. Was obtained on normal.

Comment by majjic33

Hey all, I just got this mount! Took approximately 25 runs. Each run took about 5 mins on my 100 feral druid. Even tried a few on my 90 hunter - any 90 alts with stealth/camo make for a quick run. I suggest clearing the instance after killing the 2nd boss for the 32g reward. I also ran with a tabard on to get exaulted for other mounts ~ 400 rep per run just killing trash quick. Don't forget the gold you'll be making from vendoring drops! I'd guess ~ 80-100g per run (aka /5mins = 960-1200g per hour). Not bad! Keep the faith, I know I got lucky at only 25 runs, 1 in 4 of you will too! Cheers

Comment by Vampiyaa

People are going to probably hate me for saying this... but I literally solo'd the Vortex Pinnacle twice on two separate days, on Heroic, and it dropped on the second shot. I am so lucky I can't even.So either hate me for my fortune, or bear in mind that this is actually possible :)

Comment by Gimmelootz

I forgot I was even grinding for this thing when it dropped. I would estimate that I did this instance around 200 times previously. Tonight I logged in and my first attempt which was heroic, it dropped. I can't believe how beautiful this thing is. I will add some screen shots.

Comment by Wheeljack

Having a 90+ rogue makes this farm trivial. An average run is completed in 2 minutes or less.

Stealth up and Burst of Speed your way through the instance. Cloak of Shadows and Sprint past the two Howling Gale. Kill Altairus and jump off the edge to be teleported to the instance entrance. Put on your favorite Netflix-show and good luck farming.

Also, be sure to loot the bosses. I made quite a few k of gold just by vendoring the drops. (and, for the sake of statistics, my final number was 3 heroics, 85 normal runs.)

Comment by Teevo

Finally got mine after what had to have been around 200 solo kills post-cata (heroic mode). I would say 1% is still accurate. 1 less place to fly to every day is a nice thought, heh :)

Comment by conrad

I got this beautiful mount about a week ago on my 18th attempt. Absolutely ridiculous, as I am never that lucky.

I encourage everyone farming this thing to keep at it. Floating around on this dragon in any major city is well worth it; makes you feel badass.

Comment by lokyo

Well, decided on having so much "Luck" with Blue Proto-Drake, Went for this mythical mount. I can't help but kick myself in the ass, attained on 6th run. I've have noticed with the comments on the current patch (6.0.3) concerning the mounts that are dropped in instances,Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake/reins-of-the-blue-proto-drake#comments (Jazzycakes2 comment) seem to be dropping at a higher rate. Although a just an theory, Not smart enough or have the software to research it =D. Wish best of luck. Also Rogue is best in running for this mount but exaggerated at 2min. My best was 3 1/2 min Complete turn with speed buffs etc. Thanks

Comment by Gannon

At level 100 a hunter can run this pretty quickly. I just dismissed my pet (I was BM at the time) and camouflaged with aspect of the cheetah on right before the first set of mobs and came out of camo only to kill the first boss in two shots.

On the platforms leading up to Altairus, you don't even have to camo, as all the mobs are spread out enough you don't have to worry about aggro, so just keep aspect of the cheetah on and two shot Altairus. If no mount drop, jump off the edge of his platform (like all the way off...like "you just can't take it anymore" off the ledge) where you would normally click the cyclone to take you to the next platform and it will port you back to the beginning, so you can run out and reset the instance.

Don't forget that you can now run 10 dungeons in an hour before getting locked out. Thankfully I only had to do it 7 times before the mount dropped, but this way it's as quick and painless as you're gonna get!

Good luck!

Comment by DarlingDoolittle

I can confirm that if you are level 100 (And have no pet out), you can simply run through all of the mobs. Find a nice space in the middle of two adds and squeeze right through. Hug the walls like they are your best friends, and don't stop running (The wind elements will "feign" death, allowing you to run right over them!)

The only things that you actually need to attack are the first boss, the howling wind orbs that will send you flying, and of course, the drake that drops this mount. Everything besides that can be ignored. After you're done with the second boss, jump off and it'll send you to the start of the dungeon.

When I ignore all of the mobs, it takes me anywhere from 2-4 minutes to run the dungeon.

Comment by deepthought1983

Dude. No need to hit the orbs. At level 100, YOU CAN RUN RIGHT THROUGH THEM.

Comment by selkie47

Was farming rep, not expecting the mount to drop. What a nice day this is. :)

Comment by gapds

I tried countless runs in normal mode, so I decided to try in heroics too. Got it on the 3rd heroic.

Comment by Aenes

Just a tip; If you want to reset the dungeon while farming for this drake, Just jump off the platform. You will be caught in a whirlwind and teleported to the entrance of the dungeon so you don't need to run all the way back. :3

Comment by Maeow

Just got this on my main. I got it after my 110th kill in normal mode.

Based on the percentage, this amount of runs wasn't lucky, nor unlucky. Fairly average actually, so if you're expecting to farm for this mount, be ready to do the Vortex Pinnacle this many times in the very least.

Always remember, patience and persistence is always rewarded, especially in World of Warcraft.

Comment by trploafer

Have to admit it could be just luck. But after read recent comment about high drop rate in current edition I decided to come try this drake. After 3 normal runs I change to heroic to call it a day. And in the 1st heroic try the drake dropped. Good luck and hope this can help.

Comment by Loordes

I settled in for a long farm, only to get this on my 5th attempt... confirmed you can get it on normal - you do NOT have to run heroic. Also as level 100 you can walk right past all the trash mobs.

Comment by sterling07

I'm wondering if i'm doing it right.. So i just start farming in normal mode, I go to the drake, kill it, jump off the terrace, than go out from the instance. Than I reset the instance,so that i can re-do it. I'm doing this for about the 60th time...still don"t know if this is a good method, but in 6.1 there isn't any lock in normal mode as i noticed, so maybe this can be a good way.

Comment by furymask

Went farming for this, Vitreous Stone drake, and Rivendare's deathcharger

Vitreous dropped on my 7th run of stonecore

North Wind drake dropped on my 21st run of vortex pinnacle

Deathcharger dropped on my 203rd run of Stratholme

Overall pretty decent

Comment by ToviValdora

I'll post this to the other drake too...

I *think* there might be a higher drop rate on heroic than normal. I was able to run both Vortex and Stonecore 22 times a day on heroic.

This drake dropped after about 30 runs; the Stonecore drake after about 60 runs.

I know there's a possibility I just got extremely lucky (rng and all) but I just wanted to share my findings in case someone wants to do just what I did.

Good luck.

Comment by ViperShot

At level 100 this becomes seriously easy to do. I play as a BM hunter, for those who were wondering. This is what I do.-Zone in-Just walk through. I didn't even bother to stealth, my pet took care of it.-Kill the first boss-Just run through all the way to the dragon-Just nuke it.-Jump down, reset, repeat

But remember, this mount is still very rare and can take you hundreds of runs to actually get. Or it could take you twenty. Random drop is random. Personally it took me 4 runs.. I was very suprised but happy with it. Just don't give up and you'll eventually get it!Happy hunting!

Comment by g90814

This is so much easier at lvl 100. You can run by most of the mobs without aggro... so just run to target boss, then jump off side. You'll be ported back to entrance, then you can exit, reset, and repeat.

Comment by scottishvoodoo

Took about 150-200 runs for me. Used a rogue and kept up Burst of Speed. When I got to the Howling Gale I just used Cloak of Shadows and Sprint past. Was very quick to do and worth doing for this lovely mount!

Comment by Abudora

Farming this bad boy, currently at 70 kills, yet no drop. I will keep updating! Doing normal runs.

UPDATE: 75 kills it dropped! From all the comments below it looks like I had a bit of luck. I just ignored all monsters and didn't loot anything apart from the boss that can drop the mount. GL everybody!

Comment by Crishalt

I can confirm, that he dropped me today at 4th solo run with my 100 lvl mage, just nuke. :)

Comment by Tiefflieger

Some quick facts:

as a 90+, you can run the instance even without stealth without pulling any mobs. Every once in a while they will aggro you though when they walk right into you.

After killing the boss that drops the mount, just jump off the platform, exit the instance and reset it.

There's a limitation of 10 runs per hour

Each run cycle takes about 2 mins 30 seconds minimum.Measured as a lvl 97 feral, starting in the instance up to finishing it, including: exit instance, reset, re-enter instance

You may be very lucky or very, very unlucky: Drops have been reported both at the 4th and at the 800th run.

Doing some maths: A drop rate of 0.9% for each kill leads to:

A chance of 50% to get it within 77 tries.

A chance of 75% to get it within 153 tries.

A chance of 90% to get it within 255 tries.

Things to do once it drops:

Cry and laugh like a maniac

Shout eureka while running through the streets naked (have as per regulations a friend with a handy bath towel nearby though)

Tell those nice men in white they can let you out now

Comment by alessandrouw

I got this after 235 attempts (/sigh) and I used a level 91 Rogue with Burst of Speed and Nightstalker. I could do roughly one try for each 2 minutes. You can do 10 attempts before you get blocked from doing instances, and you have to wait an hour to try again. I recommend just sitting an alt outside and logging him once in a while.

Comment by Coldaria

Druids have it easiest when it comes traveling through this instance the quickest. All you have to do is equip Glyph of Travel and go Stag the entire time. You get the 60% mounted movement speed bonus from the glyph in this instance and thus moving at full mounted speed! Hell as a Feral I one shot the bosses in Stag form. It cuts a 2-2:30 min run to 1-1:30 min. Course you'll run out of your 10 instances per hour faster, but you can kill time by farming Cataclysm mats below.

Comment by WoWtjejen

Got it on my first try *happy*

Comment by pofke13

I never played cata dungeons, i only jumped right up to pandaria, and i am sorry to brag, but i got this mount, so here is the short story: i was doing quests in Uldum, and i thought, that i would be nice to solo the vortex pinacle for the purpose of learning the lore and etc. When i killed Altairus i just looked at the loot and bam! A drake mount, it looked very cool and it's epic, so i thought i should check him on the wowhead for the drop rates, and then i realised that i must be the most lucky player in wow :D, it was sad to read all the comments writing about endless grinding of this mount, when i just claimed it on my first try, well that's the story, good luck finding your own drake :)

Comment by Quackie

Hi folks,

While there are far better guides and data collected than I can provide, I figured I would share my experience to provide some insight to anyone looking to farm this mount. While I don't have an addon that tracks boss kills, and the stats page under achievements only tracks the last boss of each dungeon, I did keep a general tally in my head regarding how many runs it took for me to get this mount and the one from Stonecore.

In short, the Stonecore mount took quite a bit longer for me, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 runs. This mount took me ~40 runs of Vortex Pinnacle to finally drop. Considering the fact that you can run these dungeons 10 times/hour, most people seem to get the drop in ≤200 runs, and most runs take ~2-3 minutes to complete, you can reasonably expect to spend ≤30 minutes per grind session, which equates to roughly 10 total hours in each dungeon. Some might be luckier, and some won't.

In short, if you're serious about getting this drake and the one from Stonecore, just make an agreement with yourself that you're ready to complete 200 runs in each dungeon. You'll likely see at least one of the mounts in far fewer runs, but RNG is stubborn so there's no telling for sure. I set the same parameters for myself, and I wasn't disappointed because this drake dropped in ~40 runs.

Good luck, hang in there, and it WILL drop if you're persistent. Happy grinding, and I'll see you in the skies on your new mount, soon enough!

Comment by hotcore

I just got this mount after about 100 runs. The best class by far to do this farm is a level 100 hunter and simply avoid all the mobs. Use aspect of the cheetah and barrage things that get in your way, but don't go out of your way to kill mobs as it will waste time. I also killed the first boss due to some of the loot having a vendor price of over 20g+ This grind wont reward much gold so basically killing this boss will pay for your durability of your gear as you will need to repair after 20 runs or so.This grind can be very long so don't expect to get this mount in the first couple of kills. I got the stonecore mount in about 30 runs and I honestly believe this mount has a much lower drop rate then that mount.I didn't bother to use any treasure potions as I'm not killing many mobs so pointless having it. Also because I ran it on normal, it has a much lower % rate to drop treasure chests with the potion so don't bother to use one.Good luck to everyone farming this mount. It's a great mount and worth the farm :)

Comment by Mbalmer

Does anyone know what the percentage is of not seeing this drop in 300 kills? I'm at that point. I feel like I'm in a very unlucky percentage of people.

Comment by aceturnedjoker1

So, I realize that this may cause some negative responses, but I can assure you that it isn't my intention. It's simply a demonstration of RNG (and, if it helps coping, I've been after Invincible for years without seeing it drop). This mount dropped after only approximately 30 runs - heroic and normal. Now, off to farming others. Good luck, guys!

Comment by MrShekelstein

Running Vortex Pinnacle on my Shaman using Glyph of Ghostly Speed takes around ~1:50 in and out without pulling anything and only killing Ertan/Altairus.

So far I'm on around 200 runs give or take on normal mode and yet to see it drop.

Good luck.

Update: Got it around my 280th run.

Comment by lizardo

I was starting to give out hope. It finally dropped at 392 tries.Fastest by far for running this is a rogue using Burst of Speed and Nightstalker. Also take Shuriken Toss to the first boss instantly from far, and to kill the orbs quickly. Speeds things up.Fastest I could get in and out was 1:45 min.

Comment by Gormadok

finally got mine after more or less 110 runs (excluding earlier visits for achievements, timewalking etc). 10 runs in row, 4 times a day, and at the end of 3rd session of runs in 3rd day it dropped.

tactics - simpliest and fastest possible. NORMAL MODEMM Hunter with aspect, with camouflage (which isnt in fact necessary because you can skip all of groups of mobs) just to be sure to not pull mobs. 1) kill 1st boss and loot2) kill 2 gales to avoid being kicked out of map (barrage is enough)3) climb up the ramp and kill 2nd boss and loot it.

also got 4000g from those 2 bosses :D

GLand now its time to farm Stratholme :D

Comment by Conqu3rer

Was sick of farming the Infinite Timereaver and thought of getting this one instead. I knew it would be an endless grind, but I was prepared to do it. I went in and killed the boss and it dropped. It's the first mount that I actually got on my first try. Good luck to all those farming for it.

Comment by ttururu

This may have been mentioned already, but a reminder about those orbs...even at lvl 100, you can still get knocked back :| Found this out on my 40th try (never ran the dungeon at appropriate level), when it kicked me off the bridge and I had to walk all the way back. Not anything too big, but a bit of an annoyance. I will just kill these from now on.

Comment by Ejen

Got this on my first run sadly someone rolled 2 higher than me what a good and bad luck for me

Comment by dchriest25

Only 290 kills. BAM! (Not including the odd run on alts)

Finally I have all 4 (North, East, West and South).

Comment by drinksuncist

I've seen several people posting their current attempt count and saying they'll update when they get it, then the mount drops only a few attempts later, so I'm trying that.Just finished attempt 164, have one run left before waiting for the hourly reset. Will update when the mount drops.

Comment by Whitecell

Look i've personally lost count how many times I've run this boss for the mount but if posting here somehow grants the favor of the wow gods and rngesus smiling upon me so be it.... Guild is off this week and it will allow me to max my runs per day... figure I would stop on by and check out these post while I'm locked out...

Comment by Aaahead

Every class at level 100+, even healers, can easily solo The Vortex Pinnacle's first and second boss in under 5 minutes, and avoid pulling any trash. Just hug walls and walk to the side of the trash mobs or between them. The only combat needed other than with the bosses are any ranged attack against the two Howling Gale wind orbs on a bridge to temporarily disable them, to prevent their knockback. The second boss, Altairus, is the one that has a chance to drop Reins of the Drake of the North Wind. If that's all you're after, do the dungeon on normal mode; after the fight, you can jump off the platform to be moved to the entrance, leave the instance, right-click your character portrait, choose "Reset All Instances", and go right back in, up to ten times per hour.

The drop rate for Reins of the Drake of the North Wind based on current wowhead data is 0.87% on normal mode, and 0.75% on heroic mode. Heroic mode can only be done once per day per character, so normal mode is better for repeatedly farming the mount.

There are a couple mob packs just past the initial bridge that can drop around 8 or 12 Volatile Airs, which still sell for around 7 gold each in WoD, so if you can kill them in a couple seconds it might be worth doing.

Comment by esmerelda1rm

Finally dropped after 138 runs!

Comment by Braylyn

Decided after not farming this mount for a long time and was actually headed to Dragon Soul, to fly over and try at it instead. After running it 5 times on normal and resetting, this beauty dropped for me.

I am not sure how many times I farmed it prior to today, however I'd venture to guess about 50 tries. ( Including running this randomly during leveling and time walking.

Also I'd like to add I was able to walk past all of the trash other than the orbs on the way, as a 100 shadow priest.

Comment by RavingRavec

Just dropped for me on normal mode after a total of 65 runs (45 normal & 20 heroic) 30-05-2016

Comment by DreadedX

Dropped first run today on Heroic! Amazed :O

Comment by Pyr15

Dropped today on 2016-06-25. It was on normal difficulty. Altogether, it was 120 runs (60 heroic and 60 normal). I ran the dungeon twice everyday.

Comment by Devious05

Did 25 runs since installing rarity a week ago and it dropped today. I farmed it on normal using my druid. I've probably done another 15 runs before that.

Comment by Thedd

A couple of things that helped my grinde go that much smoother and less tedious.

You cannot just leave the instance after downing him which leaves three options:1: Finish the dungeon and then take the whirlwind out. This means half of the time spent in this dungeon will be pointless.2: Alternately farm on 2+ characters so that when you switch you will automaticaly be at the start and you can just step out and reset.3: Do something after each run (I would down him, then run a bg) so you will start just outside AND it will help keep you from hitting the "You have run to many instances" issue.

Possibly use this as an opportunity to farm other reps as well, if you are missing any faction reputations equip a tabard and so you are farming two things at once... at least it gives you secondary goals so it is not as boring a grind. I have been farming Huojin rep personally, and it just feels better to have a bar moving so it feels like something you can track.

Comment by iaminanimate

Decided as I was bored to insanity of archaeology to farm this. 109 kills on normal before it dropped. Fastest way I found at 100 was an enhance shaman with glyph of ghostly speed - for some reason that procs the faster speed inside the dungeon. You can skip all trash and just need to 1 shot each boss and the orbs that will throw you off. As soon as altairus is down jump off edge and get ported back. Not sure of resets now but I was getting 9 clears before it locked me from instances. Took approx 2 1/2 mins to do the run and port out again. Now back to arch :(

Comment by datbacon

Dropped for me today after 8 normal runs. From the comments here i see i was extremely lucky. 1:30mins each run on my rogue.

Looks awesome, i love it! :)

Comment by cretin11384

Dropped for me on my rogue today after a hilarious 2 runs. I recommend you go in using a stealth class like a rogue for speedy runs.

Comment by thenarutardd

I was so bored and didn't know what should i do in the game so i decided to do a few runs as i was trying this for the first time. Got it on my 4th run :)

Comment by Sluggzo

With the removal of the rogue's Burst of Speed in 7.0, which class is now the fastest / most efficient to farm this with?

- In WoD, spamming BoS, my rogue could usually reach Altarius in 1:35-1:40. Adding another 15-20 seconds to zone back out/reset/zone back in, I could run laps in just under 2 minutes, and comfortably complete 10 attempts in 20 min.

- Minus Burst of Speed in 7.0.3, my average rogue run jumped to 2:25-2:30, using Subtlety's Nightstalker passive for a 20% speed bonus while stealthed and Sprint on a 1-minute CD (2x a run). 10 runs averaged me about 26-27 minutes.

- I tried using my Shaman's Ghost Wolf form for the 30% speed bonus. This brought my average run down to 2:20, but I without stealth I'd occasionally aggro stuff and lose a few seconds.

- My winner was my druid, using cat form for the 30% speed bonus, plus stealth, plus Displacer Beast on a 30s CD, and Dash on a 3m CD. Depending on whether Dash was available, my laps would bounce between 1:50 and 2:05, and 10 runs would take me about 23 minutes.

I expect people will come up with more efficient tricks than this; thankfully, I don't have to try any more, as I finally got the drake on (what Rarity says was) my 342nd attempt, easily the stingiest mount I've farmed to date.

Comment by meenaze

A demon hunter can jump from the first bridge and Fel Rush x2 + Glide down to the platform.So you can skip the whole running down the circle thing, the time it took for me to kill the boss from start to exiting the instance was exactly 2 minutes. So I can recommend farming this one as a DH :)

Comment by Feldeer

After killing Altairus about 200 times on normal (I think it has the same chance of dropping on heroic), the mount dropped. Let me tell you how you can get done with this dungeon quickly without encountering many, if not, any trash mobs at all, using a level 100 or somewhat below Havoc Demon Hunter (might work for Vengeance too, I'm not sure):

You have three different moves that can speed your way through the dungeon: Fel Rush, Metamorphosis (use wisely), and Vengeful Retreat. If your level is high enough like the level I stated above, the mobs will not notice you unless you literally go right up to them or kill an enemy that is near a pack of mobs.

With fel rush, you can just spam it constantly throughout the dungeon (while keeping out of range of foes of course). If you don't use fel rush much however, you might wanna get to know its mechanics and damage range a bit, otherwise you will attract mobs. Fel Rush has a 10 second cooldown per rush.

With metamorphosis, you can just move your mouse forward to hover the circle over to the farthest distance you can that is away from enemies. I believe this attack has just as much range as your demon hunter's melee attack, so it won't kill/attract mobs if you click on a barren area; also, believe me, the maximum jumping range for this move is HUGE. The only down side, is that this attack has a 5 minute cooldown.

Finally, vengeful retreat. With vengeful retreat, all you have to do is have your avatar stand in the opposite direction of where you're supposed to be going, and then use this move. You have to be quick, though, if you want this move to be beneficial to completing the dungeon quickly. However, you have to have a basic idea of where you're going to land first, as you will have no control of your character until a couple seconds after executing this technique. Otherwise, you'll just wind up hopping into a band of mobs, or, worst case scenario, accidentally jump off the platform and into the abyss of clouds below, forcing you to walk all the way back from the start of the dungeon. This attack has a 25 second cooldown, 15 if you have the "Prepared" talent.

Now let's get into the Howling Gales if they prove too much trouble. If the gales ever push you off the bridge, you can use the Demon Hunter's glide ability to make your way back, or fel rush to get back on the bridge as well if you get pushed off a certain distance.

Finally, once you've done all of this all the way up to Altairus, simply kill Altairus, then jump off the platform so you can teleport to the start of the dungeon, reset it, and run it again. Repeat this whole process, and one run should take you less than three minutes!

PS: You do not need to use Metamorphosis to get done with the dungeon in less than three minutes. However, when it is available, it is a good idea to use it to skip past the Howling Gales on the bridge near Altairus' location.

Comment by CaptainCrashride

Got it on my second trydownvote me

Comment by StrutEQ

Hey Elizia here new to WoW decided I wanted to farm out this mount. I am a 110 demon hunter and decided to record myself doing a run demonstrating how I quickly was finishing this instanced dungeon.

Apparently since I am a new poster my link will not work. However you can find my video by typing in

Farming Reins of the Drake of the North Wind DEMON HUNTER in google.

Ciao!

Comment by PKM999

Dropped for me on my 30th run on Normal. As others have mentioned, it is fast to run as Demon Hunter.

Comment by Adisae

I have finally gotten the mount! It took me 93 runs in four days to get it, but it was wholly worth it. This mount is big and beautiful, the lighting animations in its scales are spectacular.

Just a helpful hint I learned along the way is that you do not actually need to kill any ads on your way to the second boss. If you hug the outside wall of all the paths except for the winding path down where you will hug the inside wall, you can walk past everything not aggroed. That is assuming you are outleveled for that area where mobs do not aggro easily. I was able to speed run the dungeon to the second boss in my WW monk in 2:32.02 fairly consistently. That is if the Howling Gale decides to let me pass on my way through the first time.

The main trick to this mount is to lose all hope of ever getting it and eventually it WILL drop. The first 60 or so runs I had a sliver of hope, but after hitting the instance limit per hour so many times, I had stopped believing it would happen anytime soon. So if you are currently farming for it, keep going! You will get it soon enough!

Comment by Adrena1in

More than 202 tries and still nothing. Cancer.

Comment by Bibliomanzer

Just did my first ever run of Vortex Pinnacle (Normal or Heroic), and this mount dropped for me. Yet it took me years to get the Raven Lord mount. Win some, lose some.